Professional Microsoft IIS 8

IIS Versions 1.0 to 4.0

IIS was released with Service Pack 3 for Windows NT 3.51, as a set of services providing HTTP, Gopher, and WAIS functionality. Although the functions were there, most users chose alternatives from third-party vendors, such as O'Reilly's website or Netscape's server. Although these services had been available for years with the various flavors of UNIX operating systems, native Internet services for Windows were mostly an afterthought, with little integration with the Windows operating system.

With the advent of Windows NT 4.0, IIS also matured in version 2.0. The most notable improvement in IIS version 2.0 was closer integration with the Windows NT operating system, taking advantage of Windows security accounts and providing integrated administration through a management console similar to many other Windows services. IIS 2.0 introduced support for HTTP Host headers, which allowed multiple sites to run on a single IP address, and aligned Microsoft's IIS development with National Computer Security Association (NCSA) standards, providing for NCSA common log formats and NCSA-style map files. IIS 2.0 also introduced a web browser interface for management and content indexing through Microsoft's Index Server.

IIS version 3.0 was introduced with Windows NT Service Pack 3 and introduced the world to ASP (Active Server Pages) and Microsoft's concept of an application server. A precursor to the ASP.NET environment, ASP (now referred to as classic ASP) is a server-side ...