WCF - Part 3: Binding Comparison

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) has various built-in bindings. System-provided bindings are used to specify the transport protocols, encoding, and security details required for clients and services to communicate with each other.

Although some of these values can be configured differently on certain bindings, the table shows the defaults for each type.

This post will briefly describe and summarize the key differences between WCF's built-in bindings.

Note: WCF also allows you to define your own custom bindings.

Class name	Description	Transport	Message encoding	Security
*BasicHttpBinding*	A binding that is suitable for communication with WS-Basic Profile conformant Web Services like ASMX-based services. This binding uses HTTP as the transport and Text/XML as the message encoding.	HTTP	Text	None
*WSHttpBinding*	A secure and interoperable binding that is suitable for non-duplex service contracts.	HTTP	Text	Message
*WSDualHttpBinding*	A secure and interoperable binding that is suitable for duplex service contracts or communication through SOAP intermediaries.	HTTP	Text	Message
*WSFederationHttpBinding*	A secure and interoperable binding that supports the WS-Federation protocol, enabling organizations that are in a federation to efficiently authenticate and authorize users.	HTTP	Text	Message
*NetTcpBinding*	A secure and optimized binding suitable for cross-machine communication between WCF applications	TCP	Binary	Transport
*NetPeerTcpBinding*	A binding that enables secure, multi-machine communication.	P2P	Binary	Transport
*NetNamedPipesBinding*	A secure, reliable, optimized binding that is suitable for on-machine communication between WCF applications.	Named Pipes	Binary	Transport
*NetMsmqBinding*	A queued binding that is suitable for cross-machine communication between WCF applications.	MSMQ	Binary	Message
*MsmqIntegrationBinding*	A binding that is suitable for cross-machine communication between a WCF application and existing MSMQ applications.	MSMQ	doesn’t use a WCF message encoding – instead it lets you choose a pre-WCF serialization format	Transport