In the area of Internet services, Windows 2000 has enhanced many of its technologies and has added new features and functionality. Internet Information Server (IIS) is the starting point, and it includes improvements of its own. WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning), IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) and integrated DHCP/DNS servers are also part of Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server. WebDAV simplifies Web-site maintenance. IPP is a cool improvement for managing and using printers, even over the Internet. And with an integrated DHCP/DNS server, it's easier to maintain the DNS hierarchy for your system.

IIS
Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server feature an updated version of IIS, which Microsoft claims performs better and has improved tuning features compared with earlier versions. For example, Microsoft says the new IIS 5.0 can be set to limit both a site's CPU utilization and bandwidth. When we tested these controls, the bandwidth limit worked as advertised, but we didn't observe any effect on CPU utilization. The limit applied to the out-of-process applications IIS may use, but in our tests we used no processes that fell under this load restriction.

To investigate Microsoft's claim of better performance, we repeated the tests that appeared in our article "The Best Bets for Web Development" (www.networkcomputing.com/1020/1020f1.html). As with that story, we used a Compaq ProLiant 6000 quad-processor box, along with 41 Pentium 200 PC clients and a Lucent Cajun switch. Our client computers read Web pages of two different sizes: 1 KB to 10 KB up to 100 KB to 200 KB. We followed these tests with one in which the same-size pages were generated via server-side includes.

We found the performance difference between NT 4 and Windows 2000 insignificant in terms of serving static pages. However, Windows 2000 did provide a performance boost when serving pages with server-side includes--at least until the size of the Web pages increased and the network became a bottleneck.

It's notable that in the static Web-page tests and in the server-side include pages with larger data payloads, both NT 4 and Windows 2000 still had CPU cycles to burn on our systems. This would indicate a bottleneck somewhere in our test environment. After adding a third NIC to the test setup, we didn't see an 80-Mbps throughput increase. It's quite possible that we were pushing the limits of the Lucent Cajun switch at this point.

You Down With IPP?
IIS includes support for IPP, which allows clients to use a printer just by knowing its URL. To see printer status, users simply point their Web browser to hostname/printers/; this calls up a list of printers installed on that machine. On client machines, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 is required in order to authenticate to and view this URL because of IIS's authentication mechanism. Some printers can even display current status information, such as the amount of paper left in the trays, front-panel status and status of the toner cartridge. We found this ability quite handy as it lets administrators view print status from anywhere on the network. During our tests, we were able to check the status of printers in Syracuse from the Wisconsin lab simply by using our Web browser. Helpdesk staff will appreciate this feature.

The easiest way we found to install a printer on clients' local machines is to locate the /printers/ URL and select the clients' printer of choice. Next you'll see an option to "connect" to the printer. After you select it, the printer drivers will be downloaded and installed on the local machine. Of course, this option will appear only if you're using a Windows 2000 client. With IPP, users can send print jobs over the Internet. We sent a test print document to the printer in Syracuse from the Wisconsin lab without any mishap. An IPP printer can be configured directly from the control panel by supplying the full URL to the printer.

WebDAV
With the inclusion of WebDAV, IIS 5.0 benefits from several additions to the HTTP 1.1 specification, such as the actions "move" and "copy." Eager to examine WebDAV's ability to help publish Web pages and sites, we enabled it on our test system and called on Microsoft's FrontPage 2000 to import a small portion of a personal home page. We then made a few modifications and told FrontPage to publish our work. After providing the URL to publish to on our test server, we were prompted to log in. A few seconds later, our new site was up and ready to view.

WebDAV also makes Web folders available on Windows 2000 machines or on Windows 9x machines with Internet Explorer 5 or Microsoft Office 2000 installed. On a Windows 2000 client workstation, we added a new network place in the Network Neighborhood and were impressed by WebDAV's thoroughness. After opening the Web folder in Windows Explorer, we moved some images to a new folder. We expected that the pages linked to these images would be broken, but we were pleasantly surprised when those pages were updated automatically. This bit of trickery alone should save people time when they're updating Web sites through Web folders. WebDAV is also supported by NetWare 5.1.