WinXP, IIS 5.1 and Visual Studio.NET in a LAN

Hi,

I have done clean new WinXP Professional SP1 installation on one computer in my internal home network (behind a D-Link 624+ router). After that I used Windows Update and installed SP2 and all available updates. I also installed the component IIS 5.1. Everything has default settings except the firewall in which I opened port 80 for the web server.

On another WinXP Professional installed computer I use Visual Studio.NET 2003 to develop ASP.NET applications.

Questions:
1. Is the security settings (default in the above environment) sufficient for exposing port 80 to the Internet? (by forwarding port 80 through the router)

2. I want to create an ASP.NET web application directly from Visual Studio.NET on the web server (i.e. not on the same computer in my LAN). What settings need to be done to be able to work with an ASP.NET web site directly on the web server from within my LAN and for it to be secure? Comment: I do not have Visual Studio.NET installed on the web server and I do not wish to log on the web server using e.g. Remote Desktop to develop on the web server.

Hope that someone will help me with this problem.
Thanx,
HubbaBubba

No answers???

Someone must have some recommendations...

Regards,
HubbaBubba

Sorry, I am trying to figure out how your question relates to IIS. You're asking about Visual Studio NET and networking.

Opening port 80 is enough to work with remote servers with interdev fwiw.

OK, I will rephrase...

Question 1. First of all, I want to expose IIS 5.1 using port 80 to the Internet. In my environment (explained above) only IIS 5.1 are exposed using default settings. Are the IIS 5.1 default settings (what I mean by default settings are the settings that come from a new installation of my environment: IIS 5.1 (I have added the component IIS 5.1) on XP Pro. All updates from Windows Update are installed) enough for the IIS 5.1 to be secure for exposure?

NOTE: Since there are not much use of web servers without networks, I guess some questions are related to networking.

Question 2. I have described how I would like to work in my newly installed environment. Develop on one computer and publish to my web server. I have made the bold assumption that IIS 5.1 is involved in this!

On the behalf of IIS 5.1, are there any best practices on how a web site should be published when using VS.NET 2003? PLEASE: Do NOT answer anything about how it is done in VS.NET 2003. This is the wrong forum!

Question 3. If there are best practices for IIS 5.1 (please read Question 2), how would I set it up?

Hope that someone will take the time answering these IIS 5.1 questions for a newbie...
Thanks, HubbaBubba

Ok, first of all using IIS on WinXP is a bad idea. You will be limited to 10 simultaneous connections, therfore limiting yourself.

When you speak of opening port 80, do you mean on your router/firewall or in your WinXP firewall? Your router/firewall needs to have all requests on port 80 forwarded to whatever computer your web server is on.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, I did not know about the limitations in the XP IIS. I will start using XP pro, and if it poses a problem I will upgrade to another operating system. Mostly some personal web sites will be used which don't require many connections.

I have opened port 80 in the Windows Firewall so that I am able to surf to the web server within my LAN. I will open the port on my router at a later date, when my web application is up and running. For starters I will develop my web site and find a secure, automatic way to publish it to my web server.

As I figure Front Page Extensions or FTP is a good choice. Anyone want to elaborate on pros and cons regarding these two.

Thanks,
HubbaBubba

Using XP on IIS for website development is a good idea. If you need more than 10 connections as a developer you're doing something wrong.

VS6 Interdev requires the FP extensions to work. Probably newer VS versions also require FP extensions. I use FP to publish asp sites to my host, but FTP will work too.

Try this:

This can be bumped up to 40 but not higher (40 is the hardcoded limit).

To do this, find the adsutil.vbs script (should be in c:\inetpub\AdminScripts or similar) and run the following command:

adsutil set w3svc/MaxConnections 40