How To Bypass Zonealarm’s Firewall For Android File Sharing On A Network!

Though the main purpose of this tutorial is for video streaming and file sharing with Android, it will serve fine for allowing any device to connect to shared resources on a LAN network.

Regardless of whether or not you specifically allow a program to share with Zonealarm’s program controls, the firewall still will often block network traffic between devices on a LAN. To get around this, we need to add a ‘range’ of allowed IP addresses, or the specific IP address of the device we want to allow through the firewall.

1. Find the Zonealarm icon in your system tray at the bottom-right corner of Windows and double-click the icon. Alternatively you can open it from an icon on the desktop or your ‘Start’ menu.
2. You should now see three large boxes labeled ‘Antivirus’, ‘Firewall’ and ‘Identity and Data’. Click ‘Firewall’.
3. You will now see two main items – ‘Basic Firewall’ and ‘Application Control’. On the right side of the window in the ‘Basic Firewall’ heading you will see ‘View Zones’. Click ‘View Zones’.
4. At the bottom of the new window, select ‘add’ and then ‘IP Range’. (see *)
5. Set the ‘Zone’ to ‘Trusted’
6. Enter the starting and ending range of your local network. Unless changed by the administrator, most home networks will start with 192.168.1.1 and end with 192.168.1.254 . (see **)
7. Label it with a description such as ‘Home network’ or ‘Home’.
8. Make sure your folders / drives / partitions are properly shared for LAN Android access

* Alternatively, if you know the specific address of the device you want to allow, you can ‘Add’ an ‘IP Address’ as opposed to an ‘IP Range’. Keep in mind that if you add an ‘IP Range’, anyone who has access to your network will be able to access whatever is shared. This may not be a big problem with a small home network, but could be an issue if it’s a public network or if there are people that have access to the network, but you don’t necessarily want them able to access things you need shared for yourself. For example, you’re wife finding pictures of your girlfriend’s naked pic folder or otherwise sensitive material.

** You may see your router’s name in the zone list already, you can confirm the address here before you add the range. If you don’t see it and think it may not be the default 192.168.1.1 – follow this tutorial, but instead of noting the IP address for IPv4, note the address for ‘Default Gateway’. If the IP address for ‘Default Gateway’ is for example 172.168.1.1, your range would start at 172.168.1.1 and end at 172.168.1.254

*** I’ve used Zonealarm as the example here because it’s the most popular free firewall. If you use a different firewall, the process should be similar. Look for the options or settings and add a trusted zone similar to the method outlined here.