Introduction to IIS v6

Windows Server 2003 ships with Internet Information Services (IIS) v6 which allows you host Web Services such as HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). In short, IIS allows a Windows Server 2003 machine to host Websites, FTP Sites and Web Applications written with the Microsoft .NET framework.

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IIS is also useful for hosting company Intranet sites and creating a document store which can be accessed from most Web Browsers, e.g. FTP can be used by most clients including UNIX and Mac OS. Unlike in previous versions of IIS, IIS v6 is not installed or enabled by default. Although IIS v6 is a lot more secure than previous versions, using IIS can open up many security holes for a server.

IIS also works well with Network Load Balancing which allows several Web Servers to host the same site and distribute the load.