Sometimes, you really don't want to have a big footprint on your application when you're deploying. You don't want to have the IIS dependency or other web server software, just your own executable and that's it. In combination with OWIN, SignalR supports this out of the box. OWIN is something to keep an eye on and get your hands dirty with, as this is what will make up the Microsoft web stack moving forward, not only for self-hosting but also for all kinds of hosts. It represents an abstraction that is not linked to any particular environment and makes it easier to move between different environments.

Let's get started by creating a new solution. This time around, the focus will be on how to achieve the technical solution of self-hosting and not what the solution does: