Windows named pipes

Windows named pipes provide a secure, high-performance, stream-based transport accessible via Windows UNC paths. They come with a few platform restrictions, caveats, and known issues which are outlined below.

Platform support

Windows named pipes are only supported on Windows endpoints, though they can be targeted as forwarding sources/destinations from non-Windows systems.

Access rights

Named pipe listeners are created with user-only access permissions. Remote clients (i.e. those attempting to access named pipes via an address of the form \\<host>\pipe\<pipename>) are rejected.

Known issues

• On Windows 7, the first connect operation to a named pipe listener hangs indefinitely. This is tracked by microsoft/go-winio#173. If using a named pipe client such as the Docker® CLI, this typically results in the command hanging and needing to be cancelled. Subsequent connect operations will succeed.