Internet Information Services (IIS)

What is Internet Information Services (IIS)?

Internet Information Services (IIS) is a flexible web server developed by Microsoft and included as standard with many Windows operating systems.

Unlike cross-platform web servers such as Apache, IIS is only available for Windows. Microsoft first released it in May 1995.

What is IIS used for?

IIS is rich with features. Most commonly, it is used to host ASP.NET web applications and static websites, but it can also act as an FTP server and be extended to host applications built on other platforms such as Perl.

IIS includes built-in authentication options including Basic, ASP.NET, and Windows authentication. The latter is especially useful in a Windows Active Directory environment, as users can be automatically signed in to web applications using their domain account.

Other built-in security features include TLS certificate management for enabling HTTPS, request filtering for allowing or blocking traffic, authorization rules, and request logging. IIS servers are most commonly found within corporate intranets, and less commonly serving public websites.

IIS and MIDAS

If you run a self-hosted edition of MIDAS on a Windows server, IIS is one supported option for hosting it. We provide a guide to enabling IIS on Windows ready to run your MIDAS booking system.