How to configure ASP.NET project to be accessible via local wireless network?

Question

I had to upgrade my development machine from Windows 7 to 8 -- almost the same hardware, just newer SSDs. The way it was previously set up was that my ASP.NET project was configured to "Use local IIS web server" as such:

I have IIS 8 installed on that Windows 8 machine now (it used to be IIS 7.)

The MyWebApp can be viewed on that Windows 8 machine by going to a URL as such:

http://localhost:59212/MyWebApp/About.aspx

The way it was also configured was that the same Web App was accessible via our wireless router by using the same URL (as above) from other machines on the wireless network.

The issue I have now is that I can't seem to set it up to work in this wireless configuration. So my question is, do I need to set up something in IIS? In my ASP.NET web project in VS 2010? Windows firewall? If so, what exactly?

Answer 1

Short answer, change from 'localhost' to '0.0.0.0'. That's probably all you need.

Also check

• the port is open through your firewall, if you have one turned on.
• you can ping other devices on the wifi network. Some wifi access points restrict sending traffic from one node to another on the same wlan.

Longer answer:

When you use localhost as the hostname it's resolved (through system32/drivers/etc) to 127.0.0.1.

The network card is designed to restrict access from anywhere else to that ip address, so you will need to choose a different IP address to bind to.

You could choose the actual IP address for your machine, but that may change over time.

The special IP address, 0.0.0.0, means bind to all interfaces on the system.