Checking for a web server 

To develop and test dynamic web pages, you need a web server. A web 

server is software that serves web pages in response to requests from web 

browsers.

ASP.NET pages work with only one web server: Microsoft IIS 5 or later. 

IIS 5 is a service of the Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional 

operating systems, so you can use these two versions of Windows to run 

ASP.NET applications.

Make sure IIS 5 is installed and running on a computer running Windows 

2000 or Windows XP Professional. You can use your local computer as the 

server if you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional.

A quick way to check whether IIS is installed on a computer is to look at 

the folder structure to see whether it contains a C:\Inetpub or D:\Inetpub 

folder. IIS creates this folder during installation.

If IIS is not installed, install it now. For more information, see 

 Installing 

Internet Information Server  on page 232

.

After installing the web server, install the .NET Framework. 

Installing the .NET Framework

To process dynamic web pages, you need an application server. An 

application server is software that helps a web server process web pages 

containing server side scripts or tags. When such a page is requested by a 

browser, the web server hands the page off to the application server for 

processing before sending the page to the browser. For more information, 

see 

 Understanding Web Applications  on page 217

. 

In ASP.NET, the application server is called the Microsoft .NET 

Framework 1.1. To develop ASP.NET web applications, you also need to 

install the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Software Development Kit 

(SDK). Make sure both the Framework and the SDK is installed and 

running on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional system running 

IIS 5 or higher. 

258 Setup for Sample ASP.NET Site