Using Windows7 Home Premium. It's a development machine, but that shouldn't matter.
I have IIS installed and can browse to http://localhost websites from the local machine. The default website is set to use port 80.
I added another website to IIS, set it to use 32-bit app pools, and port 81. when I try to browse to it, via localhost, I get "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:81"
ok, this is pretty easy, right? Just enable HTTP over port 81 in the Windows firewall, right? I figured to use the port-80 rule in the firewall as a pattern.
To my surprise, there is a port 80 rule in Windows Firewall, but it is not enabled. This is a snip from the Windows Firewall MMC:
Yet I am able to connect to localhost via port 80.
and I am not able to connect to localhost port 81.
WHY?
Best Answer
I'm pretty sure the firewall doesn't block/inspect the localhost/loopback address (127.0.0.1) because it's your computer. So since the target and source are the same, there's really nothing to firewall.
When you enabled port 81, or fully disable the firewall could you then access the 2nd site? If not, you may have an IIS configuration problem, and not a firewall problem.