Labs - Relay

Planned Downtime Notification

DennisPi — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:40:00 GMT

Hello all,

We’re planning of rolling out the latest BizTalk services release (“R12”) tomorrow and doing some additional network testing.

Please expect that the services will be sporadically available from 2:00pm-4:00pm PST.

Thanks

Dennis

July 9th downtime

DennisPi — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:17:00 GMT

We’ll be taking the Live services down between 6:00am and 12:00pm (6 hours) on July 9th, 2008.

Downtime

DennisPi — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:35:00 GMT

Due to some scheduled maintenance, the services will be unavailable from 10:00am until 12:00pm PST on Friday June 20th.

Thanks for your patience!

Dennis

Upcoming Scheduled Downtime

DennisPi — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:41:00 GMT

Due to some scheduled maintenance, the services will be unavailable from 5:00pm PST on Friday November 30th until 9:00pm PST on Saturday December 1st.

Thanks for your patience!

Dennis

Upcoming downtime

DennisPi — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:47:00 GMT

Due to some scheduled maintenance, the services will be unavailable from 11:00am-12:00pm PST on Friday November 16^th.

Thanks for your patience!

Dennis

BizTalk Services downtime

DennisPi — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:53:00 GMT

The services will be unavailable from 10:00am-11:00am PST on Saturday October 20th.

Thanks for your patience!

Dennis

Scheduled Downtime

DennisPi — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:01:00 GMT

Just an FYI...the services will experience some downtime on Saturday July 14th from 9AM to 1:00PM PST.

Dennis

We're back again and running on the RTM version of .NET Framework 3.0

davidwor — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:01:00 GMT

There is an updated version of the SDK that works with the final version of .NET Framework 3.0. Make sure you uninstall the previous version before installing the new one. You'll find a link to the new SDK on the getting started page. And please continue emailing us with your questions and comments.

David

RTM Builds of the Relay service coming shortly

DennisPi — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:01:00 GMT

Hi all,

A few people have asked what we've been up to... why we've been so silent. We're developing another cloud service that you'll soon learn about, and we're planning to release an IE7 and .NET Framework 3.0 release compatible version of the Relay and STS by the end of this week. We'll post another entry shortly before we take the services down to do this update.

Dennis

We're back online

davidwor — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 08:03:00 GMT

The Relay Service is now back online and running against the July CTP of the .NET Framework 3.0. There's also an updated Relay SDK to go with it. Just follow the instructions on the Getting Started page to get going. And as always, send us your questions and feedback using the feedback alias.

The July CTP is coming

DennisPi — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:01:00 GMT

Just a quick note to let you know that we're going to be taking down the Relay and STS for a few hours towards the end of this week (tentatively Friday) to move to the July CTP.

- Dennis on behalf of the Relay & STS teams.

Announcing the Microsoft Live Labs Relay Service

davidwor — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 01:09:00 GMT

I’m excited to announce the availability of the Microsoft Live Labs Relay Service. Go to http://relay.labs.live.com to read more about it and download the SDK, which includes assemblies and samples that show you how to get started. Also check out http://sts.labs.live.com for information about the Microsoft Live Labs Security Token Service which we’re also announcing today.

Note that this is an early technology preview that is still under active development. Because of that we may need to take down the service periodically to make changes. Check back here and at http://relay.labs.live.com for updates and please send us your feedback and questions using the labs-rly@microsoft.com alias.

If you’ve written a connected application before, especially a peer-to-peer application, you’ve probably run into the problem of how to expose your service to the internet from behind a NAT or firewall. These types of network devices typically make it possible to initiate outbound connections but restrict inbound connections.

In order to enable access to a service that is behind one of these network devices, developers often end up writing complex logic to establish connectivity regardless of the network topology. The Relay Service is designed to help with this problem. It acts as an endpoint in the sky that can receive messages and forward then down an existing connection to your service.

Once you install the Relay SDK you’ll find that you have a folder with a set of samples that show how to use the Relay Service. If you’ve written an application that uses the Windows Communication Foundation before these samples should look pretty straightforward. Make sure you go to http://sts.labs.live.com and register an InfoCard before you try any of the samples.

The Relay SDK includes a new RelayBinding which functions much like the WSHttpBinding that is included with the Windows Communication Foundation. Simply update your service to include an endpoint that uses the RelayBinding and give it a unique address at the Relay Service (the samples illustrate how to do this). You’ll also need to update your client application to use the RelayBinding. When you open your service the RelayBinding establishes an outbound connection to the Relay Service at the address you defined. From that point on any messages sent to that address are forwarded down the existing connection to your service.

The great thing about this model is that the RelayBinding essentially acts like any other channel-type in the Windows Communication Foundation and it can be enabled with nothing but a change in your application config. The RelayBinding also allows you to turn on support for end-to-end WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Security. There are samples in the SDK that illustrate how to do this.

David Wortendyke

Relay Development

The other members of the Relay Service team are Dennis Pilarinos and Mike Vernal. The members of the Security Token Service team are Hervey Wilson and Vijay Gajjala. Other folks who worked on both services include David Rothenberg, Ami Vora and John Shewchuk.