Additional Web Services

In addition to the standard services supported by IIS, you can take advantage of a number of services that ship as separate products. These products allow IIS to scale from a simple intranet server all the way to a high-volume public Web site or a membership service. The following items are particularly useful.

Microsoft Index Server indexes the content on your site, enables keyword searches through a search page, and returns a list of hyperlinks that map to the resulting pages.

Microsoft Proxy Server enables IIS to act as a proxy for internal clients accessing the Internet. Using a proxy server is an excellent way to enhance security on a site that does not have its own firewall. A proxy server provides a pool of TCP/IP addresses for clients to use when they access the Internet. The pooled addresses help preserve bandwidth and mask the true TCP/IP addresses of clients so that they cannot be attacked from outside.

Microsoft Merchant Server is used to create online shopping services, including online catalogs and buying services. Merchant Server has the ability to accept secure credit card transactions.

Microsoft Commercial Internet System is intended for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It is a full-service suite that includes Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) services, Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) services, membership verification, and chat rooms. This system allows you to use IIS as the backbone of a full-featured online service.

A final note: IIS 4.0 ships with several new Web services, including support for the SMTP protocol and the NNTP protocol. Using MMC, you can manage a local mail server and a news server.