Microsoft releases IIS 4.0 beta

Thanks to WinInfo subscriber Tony Barnecut for the tip: Microsoft has released the first public beta of Internet Information Server 4.0 forWindows NT Server, Peer Web Services 4.0 for Windows NT Workstation, andPersonal Web Server 4.0 for Windows 95. These releases are "Beta 2" andIIS users particularly should take note: this release will not upgradean existing IIS 2.0 or 3.0 install, so proceed with caution. The releasenotes state that Beta 3 will fix this problem.

I installed PWS 4.0 last night on my Windows 95 machine and hope to getthe NT Workstation version going this weekend. Overall, the new releaseis a dramatic improvement over previous versions, though the Windows 95Web server is clearly aimed at newbies: it automatically creates a lame"About me" home page that would be ridiculed by anyone. The Windows 95version obviously lacks some of the features in the NT versions, suchas Index Server 2.0 support, but it actually does includes Microsoft Transaction Server, which is very cool.

I attended a Microsoft Mega Summit in January and got to talk to a lead IIS developer who told me that the code base for the NT Server, NTWS, andWindows 95 versions of these Web servers are absolutely identical andthat the lower-end versions were simply dumbed-down for their particularaudiences. The Windows 95 version, for example, now supports a true Win32 executable management program, rather than the Web-only management in the previous version. Like the NTWS version, however, it is limited to ten (10) simultaneous connections by the license agreement.

I hope to have more information about IIS 4.0 soon as I intend to use thisserver on the Big Tent Web server as soon as it is stable enough. You candownload the IIS 4.0 servers and get more information from the new IIS 4.0beta Web site. Good luck getting through, however: the Microsoft site has been down for the countsince Thursday night, due mostly to heavy server loads and an increase inthe number of Active Server Pages scripts used on the mammoth site.Microsoft promises to have these problems fixed soon, but it's been anaggravating week or so if you frequent the site