Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Service Overview The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service, a primary service included as part of IIS, performs the key functions and has the characteristics listed below: SMTP can be used to forward mail from one SMTP host to another. SMTP cannot deliver mail directly to the client. Mail clients use POP3 or IMAP to receive e-mail. Windows Server 2003 includes the POP3 service for providing clients with mailboxes and for handling incoming e-mail. It enables IIS machines to operate as SMTP hosts to forward Read More

Planning for IIS 6 Deployment Before you can deploy IIS 6 Web servers within your enterprise, you first need to install Windows Server 2003 or upgrade to Windows Server 2003. Only after Windows Server 2003 is deployed, are you able to install IIS 6 in your environment. Therefore, the majority of planning activities for an IIS 6 installation involves planning for, and deploying the underlying Windows Server 2003 operating system (OS). There are a few ways to install Windows Server 2003, and therefore IIS 6 in your network. For instance, Read More

An Overview of Internet Information Services (IIS) Internet Information Services (IIS) is one of the more commonly used Web servers utilized on the Internet and in intranets. Through IIS, you can create and manage Web sites, and share and distribute information over the Internet or intranet. With the introduction of the Windows 2000 Server OS came the launch of Internet Information Services (IIS) 5. IIS 5 included the name change from Internet Information Server to Internet Information Services. IIS 5 was integrated with the Active Directory directory service introduced in Read More

Monitoring IIS Performance in Windows Server 2003 The primary performance monitoring MMC snap-ins and tools used for monitoring Windows Server 2003 and IIS are: System Monitor: The System Monitor is one of the main MMC snap-ins used to monitor system performance. This was previously the Performance Monitor tool in Windows NT. The name change to System Monitor occurred in Windows 2000. Through System Monitor, users can monitor various elements of the server’s performance, collect and view real-time data, or view historically collected data. System Monitor can be displayed in a Read More

An Overview of the IIS Metabase With the introduction of IIS 4, came the introduction of the metabase. IIS configuration information was no longer stored in the Registry, but in the new metabase structure. Some IIS configuration settings however still remained stored in the Registry, under the following keys: HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftInetMgrParameters HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesInetInfoParameters HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesASPParameters HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesHttpParametersLogBufferSize HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW3SVCParameters HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesMSFTPSVCParameters In IIS 4, separating the majority of IIS configuration settings into the metabase; speeded up access to the information. The issue with the metabase in IIS 4 and IIS 5 was that it was a Read More

Understanding HTTP Error Messages HTTP error messages are related to the HTTP status codes which are included in the response headers when pages are requested from the Web server. HTTP status codes are three digit numbers. HTTP status codes are categorized into the following categories: Informational (1xx): This category is used for testing, and is not used for production Web servers. Successful (2xx): Indicates that requests were successfully received. Redirection (3xx): Indicates that the client needs to perform additional steps for his/her request to be serviced. Client Error (4xx): Indicates Read More

Authentication in IIS Authentication in IIS verifies whether a user attempting to access a particular website, can indeed access it. Authentication is the process that verifies whether the user can access the site which he/she is attempting to access. The authentication methods which can be used to authenticate users in IIS 6 are listed below. Each authentication method can be used to authenticate users attempting to access Web sites. However, only Anonymous access and Basic Authentication can be used as an authentication method for FTP sites. Anonymous access: This authentication Read More

IIS stands for Internet Information Services and it is a type of software that runs on servers using Microsoft Windows. IIS is the second most popular server software right behind Apache servers, which are open source and usually less expensive to run. Servers that run IIS include FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP and NNTP. One of the benefits of running IIS software for web based servers is the amount of information you can collect about your visitors, usually in the form of logs. Logs are a great way to collect, organize Read More

The Types of Commands used to Manage IIS from the Command Line The types of commands that manage IIS from the command line are: IISReset, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripts, Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), and the standard Windows commands and Support Tools utilities. IISReset Command-line Utility IISReset is a command-line utility that has been in existence from IIS 5 that can be used to stop IIS, restart IIS, and reboot the IIS server. Typical reasons for restarting IIS are: When problematic ASP.NET and ASP applications exist and resource leaks Read More

Publishing Content using WebDAV You can use Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) to manage and publish content such as HTML files, ASP pages, scripts and executables, to IIS. You can use WebDAV to create and modify web content on Internet servers. WebDAV utilizes the port 80. This is the default used by HTTP. By default, WebDAV is not installed, nor enabled in IIS 6. How to install WebDAV Click Start, Control Panel, and click Add/Remove Programs. Click Add/Remove Windows Components in the Add Or Remove Programs dialog box. Click Read More