how to display "Windows Firewall has blocked some features of this program" dialog for my app?

Question

I'm developing .Net 4.0 C# Windows Forms app which hosts WCF service on some predefined port (let's say 12345). We have another iPad app which talks to this WCF service - and this connection is blocked by windows firewall. My users always have troubles with it because they have to remember to add this app to exception list etc - which causes frustration.

What is required to make Windows to display popup like on the screenshot below for my app, to make it more user-friendly?

UPDATE - I do understand I can programatically update rules in Windows Firewall. However, that would require admin privileges which is not always feasible. For example, I'm thinking about ClickOnce deployments some time in the future - not sure how it will work with this. So I'm still wondering what should I do in order to get that dialog.

---

SOLUTION: thanks to @alexw answer below, I was able to get the dialog using this simple code:

IPAddress ipAddress = Dns.GetHostEntry(Dns.GetHostName()).AddressList[0];
IPEndPoint ipLocalEndPoint = new IPEndPoint(ipAddress, 12345);

TcpListener t = new TcpListener(ipLocalEndPoint);
t.Start();
t.Stop();

and more - it's NOT possible to get this popup for WCF service as documentation states (see at the bottom):

Self-hosted HTTP addressing for WCF is not integrated into the Windows firewall. An exception must be added to the firewall configuration to allow inbound connections using a particular URL.

Houlihan

Answer 1

I'm not sure what conditions need to be met to expose this dialog, I would assume an application that attempts to open a listening port on a vanilla Windows instance should always display this dialog. Why don't you try adding your application to the 'authorized applications' list, or opening the port manually using the Windows Firewall COM interop (NetFwTypeLib)?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytools/archive/2009/08/21/automating-windows-firewall-settings-with-c.aspx

Hirudin

thank you. I updated my question - I do know about possibility to open port manually but I still would prefer to let user explicitly make a choice. – Houlihan

The user still requires administrative privileges to 'Allow Access' using the Windows Firewall prompt. Have you tried writing a simple program that opens a listening TCP/IP port and seeing if that creates a prompt? Maybe you need to do that briefly before the WCF service will start? – Hirudin

thanks - that worked exactly as you said. Using TcpListener to start listening to the port displays Windows Firewall prompt. – Houlihan

Answer 2

Just guessing, but maybe you need to enable UAC Admin Rights for your app for this to pop up?

Check out these blog posts on how to do that: http://victorhurdugaci.com/using-uac-with-c-part-2/

Philippe

Answer 3

I think you have to add an Embeded Application manifest file to your application and set require administrator, so that you can excute a bach file in it which change firewall rules. here is an exemple how can open ports using a bach file
Hope it helps

Lomax