For development, Visual Studio 2005 now comes with a built-in development-only Web server. This lightweight Web server can only respond to local requests and is therefore not a security threat. The server does, however support full debugging features and can be used as a development tool for new Web applications. When you are ready to test out scalability and performance or deploy for production, simply move the application to IIS.
If the asp.net application is not deployed in IIS and you try to run the asp.net application from Visual Studio 2005, the local development web server will be started automatically. If local web development server is automatically, it will pick up the port number randomly and run the development server in that port.
However, in some situations you might require to start this web server manually. For example, you might want to run this local web server in certain port or if you want to test the web page without opening VS 2005.
In those cases, you can use WebDev.WebServer.Exe located in
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215 (this path might vary depending upon the .net framework installation) to start this web server manually. This is the executable for local development web server; even VS 2005 internally uses this executable to start the local web server.
This command line executable accepts three parameters,
1. path : Physical path of the application which you want to run.
2. port : port in which you want to start this web server. Default is 80.
3. vpath: Specify application root using this option. Default is "/"
For example, to start a web application located at c:\temp\testing and in the port 8001.
WebDev.WebServer.EXE /path:D:\temp\Testing /port:8001 /vpath:/testing
After you run this utility, you can see ASP.NET development Web server in the system tray. You can access your web application from the browser using http://localhost:8001/testing/
