Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Firewall with Advanced Security provides technologies that help protect your computer from unwanted network traffic. By performing stateful packet inspection and supporting Internet Protocol security (IPsec) authentication and encryption, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security helps to ensure that your computer receives only network traffic that is requested or that is from authorized computers.

Hierarchy of Managed Entities

Managed Entities

Name	Description
Windows Firewall Service	The Windows Firewall service (MpsSvc) supports the creation of inbound and outbound firewall and connection security rules to filter and protect network traffic. The Windows Firewall service also implements service hardening rules to provide basic protection to common network services included with Windows. The firewall and connection security rules can be defined locally on the computer or deployed to large numbers of computers by using Group Policy.
IPsec Services	The IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules (IKEEXT) service implements the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and Authenticated Internet Protocol (AuthIP) protocols. These keying modules support the authentication and key exchange features required by Internet Protocol security (IPsec).
IPsec Policy Agent (Legacy) Service	The IPsec Policy Agent service (PolicyAgent) provides compatibility in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 with Internet Protocol security (IPsec) policies used in earlier versions of Windows. New deployments of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 should not use the policies supported by the IPsec Policy Agent service since those policies support only a subset of the features supported by Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. Instead, new deployments should use policies created by using Windows Firewall with Advanced Security to take full advantage of the additional security and features.