How to open ports on Windows firewall through batch file

Question

Is there any way within a batch file to open up specific ports on Windows through a batch file? It would be nice to have the installer do this for our server application rather than having the user manually do it.

Answer 1

Use netsh.exe. A very simple batch file that takes a port argument:

@echo off
rem -- open port (first argument passed to batch script)
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Open Port %1" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=%1 remoteip=10.15.97.0/24,10.17.0.0/16

Answer 2

This is an extension of solution provided by @Kevin Richardson. Note that "netsh advfirewall add rule" command will create a new rule with the same name every time you run the same command. The script below helps to prevent it

ECHO OFF
set PORT=8081
set RULE_NAME="Open Port %PORT%"

netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=%RULE_NAME% >nul
if not ERRORLEVEL 1 (
    rem Rule %RULE_NAME% already exists.
    echo Hey, you already got a out rule by that name, you cannot put another one in!
) else (
    echo Rule %RULE_NAME% does not exist. Creating...
    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=%RULE_NAME% dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=%PORT%
)