Understanding Internet Information Services
A web server
is a computer that accepts and responds to remote requests for pages
and other web content that are stored on the server. Most of these
requests come from remote users running Internet Explorer, Firefox,
Safari, or some other web browser. IIS is Microsoft’s web server and,
amazingly, they’ve made it available on some versions of Windows 7. IIS
runs the World Wide Web Publishing Service, which makes a default
website available to anyone on your network (or, with a bit of tweaking,
anyone on the Internet) who uses a web browser. You can add your own
pages and folders to the default website, so you can serve almost any
type of World Wide Web content from your Windows 7 computer. IIS also
comes with the IIS Management Console, which enables you to customize
your website to get it set up the way you want.
I mentioned earlier that
some versions of Windows 7 come with IIS. Specifically, you get IIS on
Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. However,
the Home Premium version doesn’t implement IIS in the same way as the
other versions:
Home Premium doesn’t come with some high-end features, such as advanced authentication.
Home Premium doesn’t offer remote administration of IIS.
Home Premium doesn’t include the FTP server.
Home
Premium is restricted to a maximum of three simultaneous data requests
(compared to the limit of 10 simultaneous requests in the Business,
Enterprise, and Ultimate versions).
If you used IIS 5.1 on
Windows XP, note that two major restrictions have been lifted from
Windows 7’s IIS 7.5: First, there is no maximum connection limit. XP IIS
5.1 had a connection limit of 10 users, but there is no such limit in
Windows 7’s IIS 7.5. Second, there is no website limit. XP IIS 5.1
allowed you to create just one website, but Windows 7’s IIS 7.5 lets you
create as many sites as you want.
Note
Windows 7 IIS 7.5’s
simultaneous data request limit is different than XP IIS 5.1’s
connection limit. With the connection limit of 10, when an eleventh user
tried to access your site, he or she received a Server Too Busy
error. With the simultaneous data request limit of 10 (3 in Home
Premium), if an eleventh (or fourth) request comes in at the same time,
that request is simply placed in a queue and is handled when the server
is ready for it.
Installing Internet Information Services
IIS
7.5 is a feature in the Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate
versions of Windows 7, but it’s not installed by default on any of
them. To install it, you need to work through the following steps:
1. | Select Start, type features,
and then select Turn Windows Features On or Off in the search results.
Windows 7 displays the Windows Features dialog box, which takes a few
moments to populate.
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2. | Click to activate the check box beside Internet Information Services. Windows 7 selects the most commonly used IIS features.
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3. | Open
the Internet Information Services branch, and then activate the check
boxes beside each component you want to work with. Here are some
suggestions (see Figure 1):
- Web Management Tools, IIS Management Service— Install this component to configure your web server from any other computer on your network.
- World Wide Web Services, Application Development Features—
The components in this branch represent the IIS programming features.
If you’re running IIS to build and test web applications, be sure to
activate the check box for each development technology you require.
- World Wide Web Services, Security, Basic Authentication— Install this component if you want to restrict website access to users who have a valid Windows username and password.
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4. | Click OK. Windows 7 installs IIS 7.5.
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