In this context, the term "binding" refers to creating an association between a service and a network interface. This association makes the service available to network users connected to this interface.

WinGate uses binding to control which network interfaces its services will be available on. For instance it is common to make services available on internal networks, and unavailable on external untrusted networks. The latter is used to prevent abuse of your proxy by unknown external users.

Services in WinGate 6 use a set of binding policies to determine which interfaces they will bind to. Using a policy makes it possible for WinGate to automatically select the correct actual interfaces to bind to, as well as react to changes in the network (such as disconnection or connection of interfaces, changes in IP address etc). This means WinGate can ship with a secure default configuration that will just work.

Binding policies allow you to specify binding based on the type or usage of a network adapter. All network connections in WinGate are automatically classified as either internal or external (may also be manually specified). WinGate uses the IP address of the adapter to choose. Public IP addresses result in the adapter being deemed to be external.

Default binding policies for services are normally configured to bind to any internal adapter. So if the usage of an adapter is changed, this will cause the binding policy to be re-evaluated, and may result in bindings being added to or removed from adapters.

Adapter usage also affects firewall rules.