WCF Binding

In WCF, the communication concepts—the transport, the message encoding, and the suite of protocols are handled by the channel stack.

It’s the binding, however, that provides the recipe for building the channel stack needed to properly process the messages. When you load a service, WCF follows the instructions outlined by the binding description to create each channel stack. The binding binds your service implementation to the wire through the channel stack in the middle.

Within the WCF programming model, bindings are represented by the System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding class. The figure Figure 2 summarizes the built-in binding classes that come with WCF out of the box.

Unlike the HTTP bindings, the various "Net" bindings were not designed for interoperability. In fact, each was designed for optimizing a different communication scenario when you can safely assume you have the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 installed on both sides.

From Service Station: WCF Bindings In Depth by Aaron Skonnard.