Windows 7 running as server

Question

I'm developing a program using Windows 7. There are WCF services (soap, rest) that are used by currently by Silverlight but very soon I'll start development of the mobile application that would make use of these services.

On day to day basis I use Mac and Apache to host my website, but during the development of this program I would like to use IIS7 to put my services online. I have absolutely no problems to access all the services via localhost but as soon as I'm trying to connect through the internet I get "The connection has timed out".

I'm sure that my router is configured right as it works perfectly fine when I'm on Mac OS, but it looks like Windows simply blocks incoming connections from outside; I cannot even connect from another computer on the same network.

So is there a way of using Windows 7 as server with IIS7 or is it only possible with Windows Server? I know it might be like enabling/disabling one setting somewhere but I just cannot find it.

Please help.

Answer 1

Windows has a built-in firewall that is probably blocking the connections. Type "firewall" into the control panel search box to find the settings to allow stuff through/turn it off completely.

Answer 2

By default, the Windows 7 firewall doesn't have a port 80 exception for IIS, you will need to either add an exception or disable the firewall to be able to connect from another machine.