About Firewall clients
A Firewall client is a computer with Firewall Client software installed and enabled. The Firewall Client computer runs Winsock applications that use the Firewall service of Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004. Setting up a Firewall client does not configure individual Winsock applications. Instead, it uses a common Winsock service provider that the other applications use. The Firewall client then intercepts the application calls and decides whether to route the request to the ISA Server computer.
You can specify whether Firewall Client support is enabled for the specific network. If Firewall client support is enabled, then ISA Server will accept incoming requests on port 1745. When a Firewall client uses a Winsock application to request an object from a computer, the client checks to see if the specified computer is considered local. An address is considered local if it is in the range of addresses included in the specific network. For more information, see Configure Firewall Client's local addresses.
If the computer is not considered local, then the request is sent to the ISA Server Firewall service. The Firewall service handles the request, forwarding it to the appropriate destination, as permitted. The Firewall Client software can send Windows user information, which is required for authentication purposes, to the ISA Server.
Installing Firewall Client
After you install the Firewall Client share, client computers can connect to the share to install the Firewall Client software. For instructions on installing the Firewall Client Share, see Create a shared folder for Firewall Client Installation. To install the Firewall Client software, users simply connect to the share and run the setup program. Alternatively, they can run unattended setup. For instructions, see Run unattended Firewall Client setup.
After installing the client software, users can modify the server name to which the client connects by specifying a different name either on the ISA Server computer to which the client currently connects or by changing the name in the Firewall client software. The configuration changes take effect after the firewall configuration is refreshed.
