You can use Peer Web Services for Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 and Windows 95 to publish web pages on a small scale, such as your own home page on your company's network. You can also use Peer Web Services to develop and test content and applications for Windows NT Server Internet Information Server without requiring that you run the Windows NT Server operating system on the computer used to create the content.
Peer Web Services is a subset of Internet Information Server. Although limited in capability, this personal version is still suitable for Web application development. Peer Web Services supports all extensions and filters supported by Internet Information Server.
Table 35.1 compares Peer Web Services and Internet Information Server.
Table 35.1 Comparison of Peer Web Services and Internet Information Server
Feature | Peer Web Services | Internet Information Server |
Operating system | Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and Windows 95 | Windows NT Server 4.0 |
Version | 2.0 | 2.0 |
Purpose | For low-volume personal publishing on a non-dedicated workstation in the corporate intranet—similar to peer-level file services | For publishing on the Internet or corporate intranet |
Services | WWW, FTP, and Gopher | WWW, FTP, and Gopher |
Control access via IP address | No | Yes |
Virtual servers | No | Yes |
Log to ODBC database | No | Yes |
Limit network bandwidth | No | Yes |
Internet Database Connector | Included | Included |
SSL support | 40-bit keys | 40-bit and 128-bit keys |
HTML-based administration | Yes | Yes |
HTTP version string | Microsoft-IIS-W/2.0 | Microsoft-IIS-S/2.0 |
TransmitFile() | Restricted to two concurrent TransmitFile() operations | Yes |
Concurrent connect limit | No limit | No limit |
Completion ports used | Yes | Yes |
Remote IIS server discovery | No | Yes |
File handle caching | No | Yes |
CPU scaling for threads | No | Yes |
Socket listen backlog | 5 | None |
Except for the restrictions listed on the previous page, Peer Web Services is completely compatible with Internet Information Server.
For more information about using either of these Microsoft web servers, see the Windows NT Server Internet Guide.