WCF Hosting Options & Transport Protocol Support

There are multiple hosting options present.

 

·         IIS Hosting

·         Self Hosting – Via

o    Console Application

o    Windows Host application

o    Windows Services

o    WPF

·         WAS

 

IIS supports hosting over HTTP protocol only.

WAS supports hosting over any protocol.

Self-Hosting also supports hosting over any protocol. However there are few exceptions. Please refer below table.

 

Note: Selecting a host environment has nothing to do with the ‘Sevice Implementation’ code, but with the ‘Service Deployment’.

 

These different hosting options support different ‘Transport Protocols’, based on the operating Platform.

 

Operating System	Protocol Support	Hosting option
Windows XP/SP2	HTTP	IIS 5.1, Self Hosting
	Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ	Self Hosting
Windows Server 2003	HTTP	IIS 6.0
	Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ	Self Hosting (only Windows Services)
Windows Vista	HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ	WAS IIS 7.0, Self Host
Windows Longhorn Server	HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ	WAS IIS 7.0, Self Host

 

 

Hope this helps.

Arun