writing a file streaming client for WCF

I'm working on a project to create gprs connected embedded devices.

I need a service that all the embedded devices can report to and regularly download large files from. I'm considering using WCF as it's a nice out of the box solution and will scale well if I design it properly. I was going to use a rest service for data upload (2 -3 calls with 8 params) and some file streaming for the download of the file ( 1-5mb).

The problem is I'm not sure how to implement the client Now I know how to write a rest client (easy) but not how to write a file streaming client for WCF. Does anyone think this is the right way to go? Would I be better off implementing my own TCP server as I've got to write the embedded side from the mode开发者_开发百科m driver up? Thanks Ronan

WCF sounds like quite a large package. For an embedded device, you should probably keep it simple. Pick from the well-known Internet protocols. On the server side, you have your choice of standard server software. On the embedded side, you may be able to purchase ready-made solutions, or else implement a well-documented standard protocol yourself.

For file streaming, over TCP/IP, you could use HTTP. (You could also use FTP but I can't think of advantages of using that over HTTP.)

If you want to go for simpler embedded implementation, and use UDP, you could try TFTP. I've used that in the past on a modem device, since we used UDP for the main communications, and thus wanted to use UDP (avoid adding TCP) for file transfers (embedded firmware upgrades). TFTP is quite straight-forward to implement on an embedded device.