Hosting a WCF service with Net.TCP

Question

I am totally new to this and trying to host the simplest WCF service with a net.tcp binding I have Windows 7 Professional and IIS7 and have enabled NON http activation.

• I start a new WCF Service application project in vs2010 and compile it. NOHTING ELSE!
• I delete all my IIS Websites and add a new called WCFHost
• I open up WcfTestClient.exe and adds http://localhost/Service1.svc the application finds it

The Web.config looks like this (untouched)

 <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="WcfService2.Service1" behaviorConfiguration="WcfService2.Service1Behavior">
        <endpoint address="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="WcfService2.IService1">
          <!-- 
              Upon deployment, the following identity element should be removed or replaced to reflect the 
              identity under which the deployed service runs.  If removed, WCF will infer an appropriate identity 
              automatically.
          -->
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost"/>
          </identity>
        </endpoint>
        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="WcfService2.Service1Behavior">
          <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment to avoid disclosing exception information -->
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>

So far, so good. But what about that net.tcp binding. I add the "enabledProtocols" attribute so my applicationHost.config looks like this

       <site name="WCFHOST" id="3">
            <application path="/" applicationPool="WCFHOST" enabledProtocols="http,net.tcp,net.pipe,net.msmq">
                <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Prosjekter\temp\TestService\TestService" />
            </application>
            <bindings>
                <binding protocol="net.tcp" bindingInformation="808:*" />
                <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:80:" />
            </bindings>
        </site>

Then I go to the IIS WCFHost website and add binding net.tcp 808:* And then I modify my web.config for the WCF Service to look like this. (just changed the binding on the endpoints)

<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="WcfService2.Service1" behaviorConfiguration="WcfService2.Service1Behavior">
        <!-- Service Endpoints -->
        <endpoint address="" binding="netTcpBinding" contract="WcfService2.IService1">
          <!-- 
              Upon deployment, the following identity element should be removed or replaced to reflect the 
              identity under which the deployed service runs.  If removed, WCF will infer an appropriate identity 
              automatically.
          -->
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost"/>
          </identity>
        </endpoint>
        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexTcpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="WcfService2.Service1Behavior">
          <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment to avoid disclosing exception information -->
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
 </system.serviceModel>

When I now try to add the service net.tcp://localhost:808/Service1.svc in my WcfTestClient.exe I get the error

Error: Cannot obtain Metadata from net.tcp://localhost/Service1.svc TCP-errorcode 10061: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.... 127.0.0.1:808

My firewall is turned off. I have seen one thing, though.. when using netstat -a the 808 port is not listed there.. should it?

Can someone help me just creating my first WCF service with nettcp binding?

Answer 1

As Tocco says, check that the service is running. You can do this by checking:

netstat /an | find /i "808 "

And it should show:

TCP 0.0.0.0:808 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP [::]:808 [::]:0 LISTENING

if the service is running correctly.

To get it to start if it's not already working, you can issue:

sc start NetTcpActivator

from the command line to ttry to start it.

Even before that, make sure that the non-HTTP activation windows components are installed.

Also check that the services are actually running. I had a problem where they would not necessarily start after a reboot.