c# - WCF - Fastest interprocess communication

Question

A have a web-accessible (via basicHttpBinding) WCF service which I also want to access from other .NET services on the same machine with as higher performance as possible. I understand that the netNamedPipeBinding is ideal for this, but wonder what the best configuration would be given that I'm only even going to be communicating with other .NET processes.

For example, I needn't necessarily use an encoding such as SOAP as this is perhaps too bulky and I don't need the compatibility with any other clients other than a .NET client. I also don't think I need any security.

What would be the best binding configuration for this purpose (or any other configurations for that matter)

Answer 1

As you have noted, the NetNamedPipeBinding binding is optimised for same-machine communication:

Provides a secure and reliable binding that is optimized for on-machine communication.

Ref. : System-Provided Bindings

In chapter one of Juval Lowy's book, "Programming WCF Services", he provides a useful decision-activity diagram for choosing the right binding:

"The first question you should ask yourself is whether your service needs to interact with non-WCF clients. If the answer is yes, and if the client is a legacy MSMQ client, choose the MsmqIntegrationBinding that enables your service to interoperate over MSMQ with such a client. If you need to interoperate with a non-WCF client and that client expects basic web service protocol (ASMX web services), choose the BasicHttpBinding, which exposes your WCF service to the outside world as if it were an ASMX web service (that is, a WSI-basic profile). The downside is that you cannot take advantage of most of the modern WS-* protocols. However, if the non-WCF client can understand these standards, choose one of the WS bindings, such as WSHttpBinding, WSFederationHttpBinding, or WSDualHttpBinding. If you can assume that the client is a WCF client, yet it requires offline or disconnected interaction, choose the NetMsmqBinding that uses MSMQ for transporting the messages. If the client requires connected communication, but could be calling across machine boundaries, choose the NetTcpBinding that communicates over TCP. If the client is on the same machine as the service, choose the NetNamedPipeBinding that uses named pipes to maximize performance. You may fine-tune binding selections based on additional criteria such as the need for callbacks (WSDualHttpBinding) or federated security (WSFederationHttpBinding)."