What Is IIS?

Internet Information Services is a system role that is bundled with all Microsoft Windows products, and it includes a web server known as Internet Information Services (IIS). IIS was defined by Microsoft in 1999 and is installed on Microsoft products.

Internet Information Services is a server role for Microsoft Windows Server products that handles the delivery of website content to end users. It has been bundled with Windows Server for some decades. It is the processor that hosts web applications as a web server. Consider it a mediator, in charge of processing application communications from standard TCP ports. For example, the default port for HTTPS communication is 443, while the default port for HTTP traffic is 80.

A web request is the term used to describe traffic that enters the IIS web server.

How IIS Processes Requests

A typical web server can employ one of two processing algorithms. In general, it can either process the requests in a single thread or generate a new thread for each request. IIS employs the thread-per-request approach, which involves accessing a thread pool and acquiring a new thread for each request.

Requests are often handled on a request-response basis. The client submits a request on the server and waits until the server responds. The HTTP protocol is commonly used to carry out internet communication between a client and a web server.

Available IIS Versions

Because IIS is packaged with Windows Server, updates are often issued in tandem with each OS upgrade or new release. IIS was initially created in-house by Microsoft as an add-on for Windows NT 3.51. It was first published in 1995. It was originally packaged with an operating system when Windows NT 4.0 was introduced in 1996; its availability of IIS by default caught the interest of many system administrators and web developers. With the advent of Windows Server 2000, it gained swiftly in popularity, and demand soared dramatically when Windows Server 2003 was released. IIS versions have been launched with Windows Server 2008, Server 2012, and, most recently, Windows Server 2016, which includes IIS version 10.

Characteristics of IIS Web server

There are two popular web server applications: Apache and Internet Information      Services(IIS). Apache is an open source installable program that is often used on open network platforms like Linux, whereas IIS is a server role that is installed on top of a licensed copy of Windows Server. Because IIS is a Microsoft product, it has various benefits over Apache; undoubtedly the most significant advantage is that the user base will be familiar with the product layout, design, and vocabulary because most are existing Windows users. This makes the product relatively simple to understand and use, and it allows other Microsoft products, such as SharePoint, PowerShell, and Microsoft Office, to be immediately integrated with IIS.

How to Install an IIS Server

The setup method is the same whether you install IIS on Windows 7, 8, or 10. As IIS is a Windows feature, there isn’t much installation required to get it up and operating. 

In Windows 10, you just need to go to the control panel, where you may toggle Windows features on and off. Alternatively, you may type “Turn win” into the Windows key at any time and get a “best match” result with a link to “Turn Windows features on or off.”
This is a quick way to get from the main screen to your destination without having to navigate through the control panel.