Sorry, I thought access to kernel mode in Windows was trivial if given admin rights, and thus that the terms were interchangeable.

Sorry, I thought you meant a driver was required to set up the firewall.

Firewalls do require installation of a driver during setup, yes. Sometimes more then one.

Come on, we were talking about how to programatically configure one, not how to install one too. The aforementioned API runs in user-mode and probably the user needs privileges to make modifications (perhaps not a full fledged administrator account, just one that has access to firewall settings due to ACLs).

Needing to install something which installs drivers defeats the purpose of not installing drivers..

I don't want the program to have full control over the computer. Just it's own port(s) that it is bound to..