Creating an access rule in ISA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISA_Server ) server.

If you are not able to ping or access the websites from a server installed with Microsoft ISA firewall, You need to create a new access rule to resolve that. Please follow the below steps to create new rule in MS ISA.

1. Access your ISA server management ( That will be in the all programs menu).
2. In the left panel below arrays you can see “Firewall policy (BART)”. Right click on that.
3. From the pop up menu select New>>Access rules
4. Give the name of the access rule and click next.
5. Select “Allow” for action then click next.
6. Next you need to select the protocols. Click the add button. You can see the common protocols under the category “Common protocols”.
7. Select the protoclos HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, FTP, PING etc.
8. Click next.
9. Select the access rule source as external, internal and local host network. you can see that under networks. Click next.
10. Select the access rule destination as external, internal, local host. Click next.
11. Select All users. Click next.
12. Click finish.
13. Click the apply button that pop’s up.

Now you will be able to ping your server and also able to access your websites.

Note : We used ISA 2006 for creating the rule.