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wcfhttptcpwcf-binding

Does the WCF HTTP binding run on TCP?

I'm trying to understand the difference between the standard bindings in WCF. As part of this, I'm reading WCF Bindings in Depth. Figure 2 shows that there are bindings whose transport is HTTP and some which are TCP. I'm confused b/c I thought HTTP was an application-level protocol, not a transport protocol -- and that HTTP ran on top of TCP. So by calling it an HTTP binding, are we to understand that it's actually running on HTTP on top of TCP?

Solution

  • So by calling it an HTTP binding, are we to understand that it's actually running on HTTP on top of TCP?

    Yes, exactly. But that's implicit. Because HTTP runs on top of TCP.

    The binary bindings (such as netTcpBinding) run directly on TCP. They do not use HTTP at all.