Types of Bindings in WCF

Basic binding

Offered by the BasicHttpBinding class, basic binding is designed to expose a WCF service as a legacy ASMX web service so that old clients can work with new services. The basic binding makes your service look, on the wire, like a legacy web service that communicates over the basic web service profile. When used by clients, this binding enables new WCF clients to work with old ASMX services.

TCP binding

Offered by the NetTcpBinding class, TCP binding uses TCP for cross-machine communication on the intranet. It supports a variety of features, including reliability, transactions, and security, and is optimized for WCF-to-WCF communication. As a result, it requires both the client and the service to use WCF.


IPC binding

Offered by the NetNamedPipeBinding class, IPC binding uses named pipes as a transport for same-machine communication. It is the most secure binding, since it cannot accept calls from outside the machine. The IPC binding supports a variety of features similar to the TCP binding. It is also the most performant binding, since IPC is a lighter protocol than TCP.

Web Service (WS) binding

Offered by the WSHttpBinding class, the WS binding uses HTTP or HTTPS for transport and offers a variety of features (such as reliability, transactions, and security) over the Internet, all using the WS-* standards. This binding is designed to interoperate with any party that supports the WS-* standards.

MSMQ binding

Offered by the NetMsmqBinding class, the MSMQ binding uses MSMQ for transport and offers support for disconnected queued calls. 

Peer Network Binding

Offered by the NetPeerTcpBinding class, this uses peer networking as a transport. The peer network-enabled client and services all subscribe to the same grid and broadcast messages to it.

Federated WS Binding

Offered by the WSFederationHttpBinding class, this is a specialization of the WS binding, offering support for federated security.

Duplex WS Binding

Offered by the WSDualHttpBinding class, this is similar to the WS binding except it also supports bidirectional communication from the service to the client.

MSMQ Integration Binding

Offered by the MsmqIntegrationBinding class, this converts WCF messages to and from MSMQ messages, and is designed to interoperate with legacy MSMQ clients.