non-http server

Question

I'm writing a server that needs to serve many clients. The traffic is NOT http (but rather some proprietary protocol on top of TCP). I'm not very familiar with commercial web servers such as IIS and Apache. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to write some sort of "extension" to run on top of one of these platforms so that I don't have to write the logic for the sockets? Or perhaps there is another way (not IIS or Apache) of doing it which is better?

My server is generally going to behave as a web service (gets request, queries db, sends response) however there is one scenario in which it stays connected to the client socket and sends updates at a given interval on that socket.

It seems reasonable for it to be a way to do this in a way that I'd only have to write my logic without the general logic of a server. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Good question, and its also good too look to leverage an existing web server - you get scalability and stability, effectively for free. I've never done this myself, but it should be totally possible in IIS (i recommend v7+ for this, makes it easier).

You can set up a new web site through the administration tool, and assign it a port to listen on - this bit is pretty straight forward. You should set its Binding Type to net.tcp (this is a dropdown in the dialog to add a new website, you can't miss it).

You can then use either modules or handlers to implement the rest of your custom functionality. This article Developing IIS 7.0 Modules and Handlers with the .NET Framework is a good intro to the subject. Most of the doco out there about writing custom handlers and modules is focussed on the HTTP protocol, but there are some snippets floating around for TCP and/or net.tcp (because IIS and Apache are web servers, and web is synonymous with http). Another resource that may be useful is this: Configure Request-Processing for a Web Server (IIS 7)

Alternatively, you may consider changing your approach and do it as a net.tcp WCF service, with this you get the benefits of using IIS, the flexibility of choosing the protocol (can be statically configured, doesn't need to be compiled in), and you don't have to write handlers or modules.