Internet Information Services – What Is IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the world’s second most popular web server in terms of overall websites behind the industry leader Apache HTTP Server. The protocols supported in IIS 7 include: FTP, FTPS, SMTP, NNTP, and HTTP/HTTPS.

(Online 29 Jul 2010 – Wikipedia: http://En.Wikipedia.Org/Wiki/Internet_Information_Services)

 

IIS (Internet Information Server) is a group of Internet servers (including a Web or Hypertext Transfer Protocol server and a File Transfer Protocol server) with additional capabilities for Microsoft’s Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server operating systems. IIS is Microsoft’s entry to compete in the Internet server market that is also addressed by Apache, Sun Microsystems, O’Reilly, and others. With IIS, Microsoft includes a set of programs for building and administering Web sites, a search engine, and support for writing Web-based applications that access databases. Microsoft points out that IIS is tightly integrated with the Windows NT and 2000 Servers in a number of ways, resulting in faster Web page serving.

A typical company that buys IIS can create pages for Web sites using Microsoft’s Front Page product (with its WYSIWYG user interface). Web developers can use Microsoft’s Active Server Page (ASP)technology, which means that applications – including ActiveX controls – can be imbedded in Web pages that modify the content sent back to users. Developers can also write programs that filter requests and get the correct Web pages for different users by using Microsoft’s Internet Server Application Program Interface (ISAPI) interface. ASPs and ISAPI programs run more efficiently than common gateway interface (CGI) and server-side include (SSI) programs, two current technologies. (However, there are comparable interfaces on other platforms.)

Microsoft has been criticized for IIS’s susceptibility to computer virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda.

(Online 29 Jul 2010 – Searchwindowserver: http://Searchwindowsserver.Techtarget.Com/Sdefinition/0,,Sid68_Gci214020,00.Html)