Features

Internet Information Services 5.0 has many new features to help Web administrators to create scalable, flexible Web applications.

Security
Administration
Programmability
Internet Standards

Security

Digest Authentication: Digest authentication allows secure and robust authentication of users across proxy servers and firewalls. In addition, Anonymous, HTTP Basic, and integrated Windows authentication (formerly known as Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication and NTLM authentication) are still available.
Secure Communications: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 and Transport Layer Security (TLS) provide a secure way to exchange information between clients and servers. In addition, SSL 3.0 and TLS provide a way for the server to verify who the client is before the user logs on to the server. In IIS 5.0, client certificates are exposed to both ISAPI and Active Server Pages, so that programmers can track users through their sites.
Server-Gated Cryptography: Server-Gated Cryptography (SGC) is an extension of SSL that allows financial institutions with export versions of IIS to use strong 128-bit encryption. Although SGC capabilities are built into IIS 5.0, a special SGC certificate is required to use SGC.
Kerberos v5 Authentication Protocol Compliance: IIS is fully integrated with the Kerberos v5 authentication protocol implemented in Microsoft® Windows® 2000, allowing you to pass authentication credentials among connected computers running Windows.
Certificate Storage: IIS certificate storage is now integrated with the Windows CryptoAPI storage. The Windows Certificate Manager provides a single point of entry that allows you to store, back up, and configure server certificates.
Fortezza: The U.S. government security standard, commonly called Fortezza, is supported in IIS 5.0. This standard satisfies the Defense Message System security architecture with a cryptographic mechanism that provides message confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and access control to messages, components, and systems. These features can be implemented both with server and browser software and with PCMCIA card hardware.

Administration

Restarting IIS: Now you can restart your Internet services without having to reboot your computer.
Backing Up and Restoring IIS: You can back up and save your metabase settings to make it easy to return to a safe, known state.
Configuration Options: You can set permissions for Read, Write, Execute, Script, and FrontPage Web operations at the site, directory, or file level.
Personal Web Manager: IIS 5.0 includes a simplified administration tool called Personal Web Manager (PWM). This tool can help you administer and monitor your personal publishing site.

Site Traffic Monitoring: Real-time graphs that display site traffic statistics, such as requests per day, requests per hour, visitors per day, and visitors per hour.
Programmability: Full support for Active Server Pages, including performance-enhanced ASP components and new error-handling functionality.

Centralized Administration: Administration tools for IIS use the Microsoft® Management Console (MMC). MMC hosts the programs, called snap-ins, that administrators use to manage their servers. You can use IIS snap-in from a computer running Windows 2000 Professional to administer a computer on your intranet running Internet Information Services on Windows 2000 Server.

Programmability

Active Server Pages: You can create dynamic content by using server-side scripting and components to create browser-independent dynamic content. Active Server Pages (ASP) provides an easy-to-use alternative to CGI and ISAPI by allowing content developers to embed any scripting language or server component into their HTML pages. ASP provides access to all of the HTTP request and response streams, as well as standards-based database connectivity and the ability to customize content for different browsers.
New ASP Features: Active Server Pages has some new and improved features for enhancing performance and streamlining your server–side scripts.
Application Protection: IIS 5.0 offers greater protection and increased reliability for your Web applications. By default, IIS will run all of your applications in a common or pooled process that is separate from core IIS processes. In addition, you can still isolate mission-critical applications that should be run outside of both core IIS and pooled processes.
ADSI 2.0: In IIS 5.0, administrators and application developers will have the ability to add custom objects, properties, and methods to the existing ADSI provider, giving administrators even more flexibility in configuring their sites.

Internet Standards

Standards Based: Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0 complies with the HTTP 1.1 standard, including features such as PUT and DELETE, the ability to customize HTTP error messages, and support for custom HTTP headers.
Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV): Enables remote authors to create, move, or delete files, file properties, directories, and directory properties on your server over an HTTP connection.
PICS Ratings: You can apply Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) ratings to sites that contain content for mature audiences.
FTP Restart: Now File Transfer Protocol file downloads can be resumed without having to download the entire file over again if an interruption occurs during data transfer.