WCF, netTcp and Visual Studio 10 - visual-studio-2010

Question

I have a WCF service with netTcp bindings. This is my first WCF service and I'm having some issues with endpoints.
My goal during the development phase is to expose the service from my development machine using port forwarding. I've configured my IIS7 default website to listen to TCP on port 12345 and created the requisite bindings. The port is open on my firewall and port forwarded on the router. The Net.TCP services are all running. I think I've taken all the steps recommended in articles on here!
But, when I try to add a service reference in Visual Studio 10 using the svc file at the IP address for the service it creates an endpoint like this, pointing to my local hostname (VULCAN):
<client>
<endpoint address="net.tcp://vulcan:12345/CloudnetService/Dispatcher.svc"
binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="netTcpBinding_IDispatcher"
contract="CloudnetService.IDispatcher" name="netTcpBinding_IDispatcher" />
</client>
This of course works locally, but obviously not on the Internet.
My second problem is that although my implemented service works perfectly well locally, it doesn't seem to be visible from outside. Telnet localhost 12345 finds the service. Netstat shows the port to be listening to TCP. But when I Telnet my IP and port I get "Could not open connection to the host, on port 12345: Connect failed".
This is the system.serviceModel section from my web.config (---.---.-.-- is a placeholder for my IP address):
<bindings>
<netTcpBinding>
<binding name="netTcpBinding_IDispatcher"
closeTimeout="00:01:00"
openTimeout="00:01:00"
receiveTimeout="00:10:00"
sendTimeout="00:01:00"
transactionFlow="false"
hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
maxBufferPoolSize="524288"
maxReceivedMessageSize="65536">
<readerQuotas
maxDepth="32"
maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384"
maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
<reliableSession
ordered="true"
inactivityTimeout="00:10:00" />
<security mode="None">
<message
clientCredentialType="None"
algorithmSuite="Default" />
</security>
</binding>
</netTcpBinding>
</bindings>
<services>
<service name="Service.Dispatcher">
<endpoint address=""
binding="netTcpBinding"
bindingConfiguration="netTcpBinding_IDispatcher"
contract="Service.Interfaces.IDispatcher"
name="netTcpBinding_IDispatcher">
</endpoint>
<host>
<baseAddresses>
<add baseAddress="net.tcp://---.---.-.--:12345/CloudnetService"/>
</baseAddresses>
</host>
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior>
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="false" />
Being new to this, I'm confident I'm doing something very basic wrong!
Many thanks in advance.
Tao

Answer 1

TCP based Internet connection is very difficult, as the Internet is not TCP friendly. Any firewall/router on the wire can simply block your traffic, and it is also hard to troubleshoot, as it is the Internet you have to dive into. So usually netTcp is limited to intranet or localhost usage.
You will have to stick to HTTP/HTTPS based bindings.