How do I host a wcf service on the internet?

Question

This is probably a basic networking issue, but I am new to this stuff and just do not know the answer.

I have written a wcf service and client. I can use one of the http bindings and get the service to work correctly when I put my machine's network IP address as the endpoint address and run the client and server from the same machine. Now, I want to be able to connect to this service from a different machine over the internet. Clearly it does not work when I use my network IP address in this scenario, but simply putting in my router's broadband IP address does not seem to be doing the trick, either. Am I just missing a firewall port that I need to open up, or am I trying to do something that should not be possible?

Answer 1

You need to set up port forwarding on your router. Perhaps someone on ServerFault or SuperUser would be able to help you. Or even a google search now that you know what it's called. The instructions will be different depending on the router. The port you need to forward will be the port you've picked in the WCF config file.

Answer 2

I host WCF services through IIS, but it took me ages to work out how. At the moment I put the files on the webserver and enable websharing on the root folder. Then you can assign them to an appropriate Application Pool in IIS, and add a service reference to any client projects using the URL of the wsdl.

I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it but its the only way I've worked out so far.

Answer 3

If you want users from the internet to be able to connect to your service, you'll have to consider a few points:

• binding: the lowest common denominator is the basicHttpBinding which is SOAP 1.1 with basically no additional features available - just like ASMX webservices. Just about anyone can connect to that. For more advanced clients, you might also want to expose a wsHttpBinding endpoint on your service

• security: how (if at all) do you want to secure access to your web service? Do you have username/password credentials that callers must supply? Check out the WCF Security Guidance for a whole slew of information bits on the various security scenarios

• authenticating your service: typically, you should strive to make your service authenticate itself to the rest of the world - this requires a server certificate and enables secured communication (messages signed + encrypted) on the wire

• make sure your service endpoint(s) is reachable from the internet, through all firewalls and proxies and everything :-)

Hope that helps a bit!