Can I access ASP.NET Development server in an intranet?

Question

Im testing an ASP.NEt site. When I execute it, it starts the ASP.NET Development Server and opens up a page.

Now I want to test it in the intranet I have.

1. Can I use this server or I need to configure IIS in this machine?

2. Do I need to configure something for it to work?

I've changed the localhost to the correct IP and I opened up the firewall.

Thanks

Answer 1

I believe the built in ASP.NET server only works on localhost. You'll have to use IIS.

Answer 2

No, you can't. It's set up so it only works on localhost, and I couldn't find any workarounds to make it work.

But, here's what I've been doing - I created the website on a specific port in IIS and opened that port up so it's visible on the network. I pointed that IIS website to my website's root folder (the one with web.config in it). Then I continued to use the ASP.NET Development server on that local machine while developing - both IIS and the ASP.NET Development Server can access the files at the same time (unless you're doing something wacky).

Let me know if there's a challenge with running IIS on your machine and I'll update my answer.

Answer 3

You can recompile Cassini to get it to work - there's a fairly easy to remove check for localhost in there. Or, I'm pretty sure Ultidev's Cassini doesn't have this restriction. Both of these are easier to setup than IIS.

But, yeah, the builtin WebDev.WebServer doesn't work....Hmm, unless you run something like AnalogX's Proxy on your dev box and point it to the WebDev port. That should work (though I haven't tried it, it should take < 2 mins to setup).

Answer 4

I realize this isn't a direct answer to your question, but an alternative to debugging using the ASP development server is to attach to the IIS process: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/210250/how-do-i-attach-the-debugger-to-iis-instead-of-asp-net-development-server

Answer 5

Nope, stupidly (IMHO) there's no way to get the default ASP.net development server to serve pages to IPs other than localhost. What I did was to use UltiDev Cassini which is very quick to set up and is basically a version of the ASP.net development server compiled by UltiDev, and it will serve pages to any IP address.