Is there a way to enable the SO_REUSEADDR socket option when using System.Net.HttpListener?

Question

Been searching for this for over an hour now, and I have not found in documentation nor in examples on the web how to enable the SO_REUSEADDR option when workin

Answer 1

No, you can't use SO_REUSEADDR with HttpListener.

The reason is that the HttpListener doesn't actually manage the underlying socket - it simply registers application-level prefixes with the HTTP.sys driver, who in turn manages the underlying connection.

To use SO_REUSEADDR, you could create a TcpListener and set the socket option on the underlying socket (accessible through the Server property) with SetSocketOption():

$TcpListener = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpListener 9999
$TcpListener.Server.SetSocketOption("Socket", "ReuseAddress", 1)
$TcpListener.Start()

But now you have to implement all the convenient things that HttpListener provides on you own (header parsing, content validation etc.).

---

That being said, this may solve the practical issue you face:

try{
    $Listener.Start()
}
catch{
}
finally{
    $Listener.Stop()
    $Listener.Dispose()
}

(don't paste this into you prompt/ISE, you need to save this to a script, or enclose in a script block for finally to be evaluated properly on interruption)