By default the windows 10 firewall uses three categories of network to determine what firewall rules to apply to a network interface, public, private and domain.
The Public category is intended for network connections to public networks and applies the most restrictive firewall ruleset.
The Private category is intended for network connections to trusted networks like a home network and the firewall ruleset is more relaxed.
Sometimes Windows incorrectly assigns a network connection to the wrong category.
Follow the following steps to determine what network category has been applied to a network connection and if necessary change it
Step 1 - Run Powershell as admin
Step 2 - Run the command 'get-netconnectionprofile' to view the network category for each network connection
Example output:
Name : Unidentified network
InterfaceAlias : vEthernet (Default Switch)
InterfaceIndex : 9
NetworkCategory : Public
IPv4Connectivity : NoTraffic
IPv6Connectivity : NoTraffic
Name : Network
InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
InterfaceIndex : 16
NetworkCategory : Private
IPv4Connectivity : Internet
IPv6Connectivity : NoTraffic
Step 3 - Use the 'set-netconnectionprofile' command to change the interface network category
For example:
set-netconnectionprofile -InterfaceIndex 9 -NetworkCategory Private
