The protocol 'net.tcp' is not supported.

November, 23rd 2011 | .NET

Windows Communication Foundation is the part of .NET framework that provides an infrastructure for building service-oriented applications.
For those who approach for the first time to these tools, I recommend a book that I found very useful: Programming WCF Services.

The peculiarity of the WCF services is the ability to offer multiple bindings on different protocols.
The same service, in fact, can be queried by a web client and return JSON or even from a WS client and return XML, it also communicate with protocols that have significantly higher performance as "net.tcp".

It is not enough, however, to set a service as net.tcp in Web.Config file.
Without appropriate settings on the machine and on the web server, it happens that the system returns an error: The protocol 'net.tcp' is not supported.

In order to use this protocol, in fact, you must perform the following steps:

  1. Install "Non-HTTP activation WCF" on the machine (Programs -> Turn Windows Features On Off)
  2. Then you need to add net.tcp to the active protocols on the ISS website (Advanced -> Enabled Protocolos)
  3. Finally, just add a binding of net.tcp type to the website

Have fun with WCF!