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Whitelisting by ip address with Windows 7 firewall

I'm exploring Windows 7 firewall capabilities. I have a machine purposed for business only, no web surfing. I want to block all ip addresses and allow only the few needed for business. I thought I'd block all ip addresses and then enter rules to except the ip addresses on my whitlelist. Just the first step is tricky because the wizard won't accept some ip addresses as valid. Beyond that I'm not sure how an exception would be entered to the firewall.

maxpi

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I can declare all connections public. I guess that closes all inbound connection attempts. That is good. I want whitelisting on inbound and outbound so maybe I just have to block all outbound connections then add exceptions for what I want to allow? I want to rule out the scenario where a hacker inside one of the institutions I do want to do business with could get in my computer and send something out to their computer offsite and I want to rule out any computer not on my whitelist making a connection. Not sure about spoofing and all that, maybe some things just cannot be prevented, I don't know. I'm assumng that the windows 7 firewall does stateful packet inspection...

I could accomplish this with a hardware firewall but then in order to connect up and work from a hotel room with wifi I'd have to have a computer for a server, a hardware firewall and a working laptop. I'd rather not travel with all that stuff rattling around in my backpack. If I could accomplish the same thing with one laptop using Windows firewall I'd be happy.. it's a piece of cake with Linux and a front end for the built in firewall but Linux won't quite get me where I need to be with my software...

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btan

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