Windows admin notes
Home, Work, Public, Private, Domain networks
✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.
The distinction of Public, Work, and Private seems mostly used in windows firewall.
The distinction seems to be about
- network discovery and file sharing
- Firewall rules can choose to apply only on domain, private, and/or public situations.
Firewall:
The windows firewall itself has the distinction of profiles:
- Domain - if joined to a domain, and currently on its network
- (If not joined to a domain, we can only be either private or public)
- as restrictive as this domain's admins like it to be for security / functionality
- Private - on a network not associated with the account
- en environment more known than public
- e.g. your home network
- e.g. a domain we know but are not currently joined to (you can be member of one at a time)
- e.g. discoverability and sharing are enabled
- Public - connected through on
- generally most restrictive, because these are unknown environments
- e.g. discoverability and sharing are disabled
Profiles:
Discovery and file sharing settings can be set per such profile (see "Advanced sharing settings"), and by default are:
- Private allows discoverability, and enables homegroup for file sharing
- Work counts as a variant of private, which allows discoverability but not homegroup sharing
- Public does not allow either
See also: