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Internet Information Services (IIS) is Microsoft's Web server suite, which includes a Web server, FTP server, NNTP server, and a few other things. Originally called Internet Information Server, Microsoft partly changed the name in version 5.0; "Server" became "Services" to reflect a shift in Microsoft's view of what IIS really is. Earlier, IIS was more or less an add-on product to Windows NT; now it is an application running like a service closely integrated with the operating system.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, IIS 5.0 was introduced with Windows 2000. This edition represented a giant step forward compared to its predecessors. Reliability and performance were greatly increased, and the need for restarting an entire Web server when an application error occurred almost vanished. (Well, not entirely, but this version was a great improvement.)
IIS 6.0 is delivered with Windows Server 2003, which is still is still in release candidate status as of this writing, but is expected to be out in the second quarter of 2003. Even though the administrational tools may look similar to earlier versions, not much of the functionality remains. Microsoft has rewritten and rearchitected IIS and even further enhanced reliability, performance, and, not least of all, security.
In this chapter, we will take a deeper look at the architecture of the two versions of IIS. We will also look at performance, scalability, and security so you can implement a Web server that fulfills your demands when building Web applications and sites.
Toward the end of the chapter, we will also give you an overview of the ASP.NET architecture.
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