How to enable external request in IIS Express?

Question

How can I enable remote requests in IIS Express? Scott Guthrie wrote that is possible but he didn't say how.

Answer 1

There's a blog post up on the IIS team site now explaining how to enable remote connections on IIS Express. Here is the pertinent part of that post summarized:

On Vista and Win7, run the following command from an administrative prompt:

netsh http add urlacl url=http://vaidesg:8080/ user=everyone

For XP, first install Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools. Then run the following command from an administrative prompt:

httpcfg set urlacl /u http://vaidesg1:8080/ /a D:(A;;GX;;;WD)

Answer 2

There are three changes you might need to make.

1. Tell IIS Express itself to bind to all ip addresses and hostnames. In your .config file. Typically:
   • VS 2015: $(solutionDir)\.vs\config\applicationhost.config
   • < VS 2015: %userprofile%\My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config

Find your site's binding element, and add

    <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:8080:*" />

2. Setup the bit of Windows called 'http.sys'. As an administrator, run the command:

    netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:8080/ user=everyone

Where everyone is a windows group. Use double quotes for groups with spaces like "Tout le monde".

3. Allow IIS Express through Windows firewall.

   Start / Windows Firewall with Advanced Security / Inbound Rules / New Rule...

   Program %ProgramFiles%\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe
   OR Port 8080 TCP

Now when you start iisexpress.exe you should see a message such as

Successfully registered URL "http://*:8080/" for site "hello world" application "/"

Answer 3

Nothing worked for me until I found iisexpress-proxy.

Open command prompt as administrator, then run

npm install -g iisexpress-proxy

then

iisexpress-proxy 51123 to 81

assuming your Visual Studio project opens on localhost:51123 and you want to access on external IP address x.x.x.x:81

Edit: I am currently using ngrok

Answer 4

I remember running into the same problems while trying this workflow a few months ago.

Which is why I wrote a simple proxy utility specifically for this kind of scenario: https://github.com/icflorescu/iisexpress-proxy.

Using the IIS Express Proxy, it all becomes quite simple – no need to “netsh http add urlacl url=vaidesg:8080/ user=everyone” or to mess up with your “applicationhost.config”.

Just issue this in command prompt:

iisexpress-proxy 8080 to 3000

…and then you can point your remote devices to http://vaidesg:3000.

Most of the times simpler IS better.

Answer 5

If you're working with Visual Studio then follow these steps to access the IIS-Express over IP-Adress:

1. Get your host IP-Adress: ipconfig in Windows Command Line

2. GoTo

   $(SolutionDir)\.vs\config\applicationHost.config
   

3. Find

   <site name="WebApplication3" id="2">
      <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
         <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Users\user.name\Source\Repos\protoype-one\WebApplication3" />
      </application>
      <bindings>
        <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:62549:localhost" />
      </bindings>
   </site>
   

4. Add: <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:62549:192.168.178.108"/>
   with your IP-Adress

5. Run your Visual Studio with Administrator rights and everything should work
6. Maybe look for some firewall issues if you try to connect from remote

Answer 6

As a sidenote to this:

netsh http add urlacl url=http://vaidesg:8080/ user=everyone

This will only work on English versions of Windows. If you are using a localized version you have to replace "everyone" with something else, for example:

• "Iedereen" when using a Dutch version
• "Jeder" when using a German version
• "Mindenki" when using a Hungarian version

Otherwise you will get an error (Create SDDL failed, Error: 1332)

Answer 7

A good resource is Working with SSL at Development Time is easier with IISExpress by Scott Hanselman.

What you're after is the section Getting IIS Express to serve externally over Port 80

Answer 8

I solved it with the installation of "Conveyor by Keyoti" in Visual Studio Professional 2015. Conveyor generate a REMOTE address (your IP) with a port (45455) that enable external request. Example:

Conveyor allows you test web applications from from external tablets and phones on your network or from Android emulators (without http://10.0.2.2:<hostport>)

The steps are in the following link :

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vs-publisher-1448185.ConveyorbyKeyoti

Answer 9

What helped me, was right clicking the 'IISExpress' icon, 'Show All applications'. Then selecting the website and I saw which aplicationhost.config it uses, and the the correction went perfectly.

Answer 10

If you have tried Colonel Panic's answer but doesn't work in Visual Studio, try this:

Append another <binding /> in your IIS Express config

<bindings>
    <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:8080:localhost" />
    <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:8080:hostname" />
</bindings>

Finally, you have to run Visual Studio as Admin

Answer 11

This is what I did for Windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015 to enable remote access, both with http and https:

First step is to bind your application to your internal IP address. Run cmd -> ipconfig to get the address. Open the file /{project folder}/.vs/config/applicationhost.config and scroll down until you find something like this:

<site name="Project.Web" id="2">
    <application path="/">
        <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Project\Project.Web" />
    </application>
    <bindings>
        <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:12345:localhost" />
    </bindings>
</site>

Add two new bindings under bindings. You can use HTTPS as well if you like:

<binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:12345:192.168.1.15" />
<binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:44300:192.168.1.15" />

Add the following rule to your firewall, open a new cmd prompt as admin and run the following commands:

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="IISExpressWeb" dir=in protocol=tcp localport=12345 profile=private remoteip=localsubnet action=allow

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="IISExpressWebHttps" dir=in protocol=tcp localport=44300 profile=private remoteip=localsubnet action=allow

Now start Visual Studio as Administrator. Right click the web projects project file and select Properties. Go to the Web tab, and click Create Virtual Directory. If Visual Studio is not run as Administrator this will probably fail. Now everything should work.

Answer 12

The simplest and the coolest way I found was to use (it takes 2 minutes to setup):

https://ngrok.com/

It will work with anything running on localhost. Just signup, run little excutable and whatever you run on localhost gets public URL you can access from anywhere.

This is good for showing stuff to your remote team mates, no fiddling with IIS setup or firewalls. Want to stop access just terminate executable.

ngrok authtoken xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ngrok http -host-header=localhost 89230

assuming that 89230 is your IIS Express port

You can also run multiple ports even on free plan

Answer 13

Combining answers in this thread, this is how I fixed it(Visual Studio 2019):

1. Start Visual Studio as an Administrator and Run your Web Service as you normally do.

2. Find IIS Express icon on the taskbar, right click on it then click "Show All Applications".

3. Select your Web Service and note the config path displayed below. Click on the config file to open it for editing.

4. Find your web service(example search for your port) in this config file then find a line like this: *:yourport:localhost

5. Add a new line after that like this:

   :yourport:*

In this case no need to create bindings with specific ip address which could change in the future.

I hope this helps someone out there.

Answer 14

The accepted answer to this question is a guide for getting IIS Express to work with webmatrix. I found this guide more useful when trying to get it to work with VS 2010.

I just followed steps 3 & 4 (running IIS Express as administrator) and had to temporarily disable my firewall to get it working.

Answer 15

You may try setting up port forwarding instead of trying to modify your IIS Express config, adding new HTTP.sys rules or running Visual Studio as an Admin.

Basically you need to forward the IP:PORT your website runs at to some other free port on your machine but on the external network adapter, not localhost.

The thing is that IIS Express (at least on Windows 10) binds to [::1]:port meaning it listens on IPv6 port. You need to take this into account.

Here is how I made this work - http://programmingflow.com/2017/02/25/iis-express-on-external-ip.html

Hope it helps.

Answer 16

I have some problems using IIS Express in Win 8.1 and external request.

I follow this steps to debug the external request:

1. Install IIS
2. Configure Visual Studio to use local IIS (Page properties in your Web Project)
3. Create a exclusive AppPool in IIS to work with my application
4. In my Project I'm using Oracle Client and must be 32bits (64 bits don't work with Visual Studio) then I need allow 32 bit in Application Pool
5. Configure the Windows firewall to allow request in port 80 (inbound rules)

It's working!

Answer 17

Another way to access external requests is to use IIS instead of IIS Express. In my visual studio, I can just switch easily.

Answer 18

If you run Visual Studio from Admin you can add just

<binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:8080:*" />

or

<binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:8443:*" />

into

%userprofile%\My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config

Answer 19

I had a local IIS enabled so i just created a rewrite rule to my debugging port... I think this is better and cooler than other method because it is easier to remove once am done developing... Here is how the rewrite looks..

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="ReverseProxyInboundRule1" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url="^dev/(.*)" />
            <action type="Rewrite" url="http://localhost:47039/{R:1}" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

VS also allows you to develop using your local IIS directly (which then allows remote connections) but in turn you must always run it as an administrator... I dont like that.

Answer 20

I solved this problem by using reverse proxy approach.

I installed wamp server and used simple reverse proxy feature of apache web server.

I added a new port to listen to Apache web server (8081). Then I added proxy configuration as virtualhost for that port.

<VirtualHost *:8081>
ProxyPass / http://localhost:46935/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:46935/
</VirtualHost>

Answer 21

I did all of these steps and nothing helped me. And what I need, it's just to run my app via IIS Express...

Hope it helps.

Answer 22

For me using this, relatively simple, and straight forward:

Download the Visual Studio Extension by searching for 'Conveyor' in the Extensions dialog. Then just install.

form: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vs-publisher-1448185.ConveyorbyKeyoti

Answer 23

I was unable to serve iis requests to other users in my local network, all I had to do (in addition to the above) was restart my BT Hub router.

Answer 24

This is insanely awesome and even covers HTTPS with pretty domain names:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WorkingWithSSLAtDevelopmentTimeIsEasierWithIISExpress.aspx

The really awesome parts I couldn't find anywhere else on SO in case the above link ever goes away:

> C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express>IisExpressAdminCmd.exe Usage:
> iisexpressadmincmd.exe <command> <parameters> Supported commands:
>       setupFriendlyHostnameUrl -url:<url>
>       deleteFriendlyHostnameUrl -url:<url>
>       setupUrl -url:<url>
>       deleteUrl -url:<url>
>       setupSslUrl -url:<url> -CertHash:<value>
>       setupSslUrl -url:<url> -UseSelfSigned
>       deleteSslUrl -url:<url>
> 
> Examples: 1) Configure "http.sys" and "hosts" file for friendly
> hostname "contoso": iisexpressadmincmd setupFriendlyHostnameUrl
> -url:http://contoso:80/ 2) Remove "http.sys" configuration and "hosts" file entry for the friendly  hostname "contoso": iisexpressadmincmd
> deleteFriendlyHostnameUrl -url:http://contoso:80/

The above utility will register the SSL certificate for you! If you use the -UseSelfSigned option, it's super easy.

If you want to do things the hard way, the non-obvious part is you need to tell HTTP.SYS what certificate to use, like this:

netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:443 appid={214124cd-d05b-4309-9af9-9caa44b2b74a} certhash=YOURCERTHASHHERE

Certhash is the "Thumbprint" you can get from the certificate properties in MMC.

Answer 25

I did the following and was able to connect:

1) changed IIS express config binding from local host to '*'

binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:8888:*"

2) Defined inbound rule on firewall to allow the particular port for the protocol type: tcp

3) Add the following command to add network configuration for your port: netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:8888/ user=everyone

Answer 26

[project properties dialog]

For development using VisualStudio 2017 and a NetCore API-project:

1) In Cmd-Box: ipconfig /all to determine IP-address

2a) Enter the retrieved IP-address in Project properties-> Debug Tab

2b) Select a Port and attach that to the IP-address from step 2a.

3) Add an allow rule in the firewall to allow incoming TCP-traffic on the selected Port (my firewall triggered with a dialog: "Block or add rule to firewall"). Add will in that case do the trick.

Disadvantage of the solution above:

1) If you use a dynamic IP-address you need to redo the steps above in case another IP-address has been assigned.

2) You server has now an open Port which you might forget, but this open port remains an invitation for unwanted guests.