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mank1327
#1 Posted : Friday, February 2, 2007 2:39:43 PM(UTC)
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I'm not looking for an exact date or anything; just wondering how the development is coming along.

Until recently, I had planned on using DynDNS as a temporary fix to connect my Apache server to the 'net, but the specs on HttpVPN caused me to reconsider that solution. I really like Cassini 2.0 (it's somewhat faster than the built-in version that ships with Visual Web Developer), but I'm hesitant to use it to open the Asp.Net part of my website to the public, for all the obvious reasons. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about HttpVPN.

Will HttpVPN also be able to resolve true domain names through a providers dynamically assigned IP's?

Thanks for all the great work.
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Ultidev Team
#2 Posted : Friday, February 2, 2007 7:25:07 PM(UTC)
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Hi there!

Thank you very much for the positive feedback! It means a lot to us.

We are pretty close to first HttpVPN Betas. We are already running first pre-alphas internally. We are now working hard on preparing our HttpVPN Portal to serve as a software store so that developers who bundle their applications with HttpVPN Proxy could market their software to customers right at the portal. It pushed the schedule about four weeks further, plus we had to redirect our resources to make another Cassini release coinciding with Vista release. As you can tell, we are about a week behind - thanks to some fun MSI upgrade issues.

Going back to the topic of how HttpVPN works: it is different from DynDNS. HttpVPN Proxy is not an analog of DynDNS client, meaning that your LAN computer names won't be resolved through regular DNS system. Instead our Portal that we'll make accessible on the web will serve as a gateway to your LAN web apps: you log in to our Portal and we show you links to your LAN apps. You click the link and we make your LAN web application served from our secure portal as if you were accessing it from inside the LAN. In the undetermined future we will implement our own DNS node and will let users buy third level portal domain names and assign them to their LANs, like https://MyHome.portaladdress.com. But it's not an immediate plan.

We count on making HttpVPN an attractive platform for web application developers - our HttpVPN should extend the reach of web applications to virtually every computer with an Internet access, and by giving developers a platform to advertise and sell their work to prospect customers.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
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mank1327
#3 Posted : Saturday, February 3, 2007 2:30:57 AM(UTC)
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Okay, thanks for the DNS/IP clarification, and for the HttpVPN status update.

As you can see, I'm only looking to make an existing .Net app available to the public for browsing, as opposed to redistribution/installation on another machine. Basically it's an informational/portfolio site with different sections that are built with, and run on, WAMP, .Net, and ColdFusion, and everything seems to be working nicely with each other. However, Cassini is currently running as System, and I wish to change this to Network Service. Can/should I modify the .dll in the VS 2005 Dev directory to accomplish this? Is this even possible with either VWD or C# Express? Some guidance here would be most appreciated. (Plus, this would make a great 'How-To' addition to present on my site, if successful).

Anyway, I see that I'm getting way off-topic here, and I apologize for that.

Thanks again for the informative response. I'm looking forward to following the progress on both Cassini and HttpVPN.

Mark
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Ultidev Team
#4 Posted : Sunday, February 4, 2007 7:02:21 PM(UTC)
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Mark,

Running Cassini under different user account would not require modifications to the code. You could change Cassini service user identity using Administrative Tools -> Services. You could try running Cassini under Network Service account, for example - it's a pretty secure one, used by most of the IIS applications. One thing you would need though is to give that account read\write access rights to Cassini metabase files, which on XP is located in the "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\UltiDev\Cassini" folder. Please let us know if you tried it and whether it worked.

We would like to ask you, what are the reason you chose Cassini over IIS for hosting a web site? We can hardly imagine a use case for that.

Thank you,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
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mank1327
#5 Posted : Monday, February 5, 2007 5:44:39 AM(UTC)
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Ahh, the answer to all questions is this: stand-alone box running Windows XP Home Edition.

Administrative Tools > Services was the first place I looked when trying to find a way to switch from System to Network Service. I'm not familiar with what other adjustments can be made via the Services panel in XP Pro, but the XP Home version only gives me the ability to start and stop services; set whether a service runs automatically, manually, or is disabled on the General tab; and set whether to log on as the system account or select another user account with minimal privleges on the Log On tab. The two other tabs are Recovery and Dependencies; interesting, but irrelevant.

I did get Apache serving pages through the DynDNS service, and I can run my .Net app if I append the port to the URL on the hyperlink that goes to the .Net app directory. Once there, Cassini kicks in and the relative links take over and I can navigate through the app without further adjustments. All things considered, it's pretty cool.

I should stress that the whole thing is a temporary test-environment. At this point I'm only interested in seeing if I can get everything to work. Even though I've only contacted a few trusted friends for some feedback, I'm pretty paranoid about leaving my one and only development box/server open for too long, and my interest in getting Cassini to run as a network service is just another little thing to help me sleep better.

Anyway, thanks for your help. If you happen to think of a workaround, by all means let me know. No problem on my end; I know you guys have better things to do than help me hack my site together.
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Ultidev Team
#6 Posted : Monday, February 5, 2007 6:35:33 AM(UTC)
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Hello, Mark.

XP Home is really tight on administration. We can't really think of the workaround there. You are right not to let Cassini listen to Internet under System account - it may be dangerous. HttpVPN might be a solution when it becomes available.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
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