How to connect two computers together to be able to share an asp.net mvc web application

Question

I have built an asp.net mvc3 web application on my machine that uses windows 7.

Now I need to host this web application locally on my machine to be accessed by two employees in our office which uses Windows XP. So I need to know the following:

1. How do I host my asp.net mvc web application inside my machine? and then connect the other two machines to use the asp.net mvc application?
2. How to physically connect all these PCs together?

Answer 1

1. Install IIS on your machine and allow access on port 80 from those particular machines. If your IT policy prevents this, stop now and ask permission.
2. Publish your app to IIS (web deploy makes this super easy).
3. There's a 99% likelihood your office already has a network and these PCs are all on it, so get your colleagues to go to http://your-machine-name-or-ip-address to use the web app.

Answer 2

An MVC3 app, is just a web application like any other.

Install IIS 7 on your Win7 machine, if you haven't already.

Publish you MVC app on your new web server

If you're computers are already domain-joined, your computer already has a known FQDN, (look in system settings), if not, access the web app with your computers local IP address (eg. http://10.0.0.14, if your ip adress is 10.0.0.14).

Answer 3

If you have an IT department, they are probably familiar with hosting web applications in IIS. They may even have real servers, rather than hosting a new business application on your workstation. It would be unfortunate if your little desktop PC became critical to business operations and the cleaning crew tripped over the power cord.