Having applied firewall rules to block all traffic to/from specific IP's in I believe the correct manner, I find these are totally ineffective, and traffic continues to those IP's

Is any action being taken to fix this fault, or is there some hidden setting to enable use of specific rules?
For any query regarding setting used:
Selected firewall->programs->advanced->add rule
then:
apply rule to all programs
network type: all ticked
permission: block
others: as default
then in advanced:
Remote Address: set IP to block
others: as default.