NT 4.0 or NT4.0 Server?

[Thomas Dowling]

>          We're thinking about getting a Dell Pentium Pro 200
>          workstation to get us started.  I had presumed that we'd have
>          to use either Linux or NT 3.51/4.0 server.  However, I've
>          heard talk that WinNT 4.0 will run MS Internet Information
>          Server.  

Unfortunately, the control here seems to rest in Microsoft's legal
department rather than with their technical folks.  It has been pretty well
documented that NT Workstation is capable of running a serious web server,
but doing so would likely violate your end-user license agreement, which
includes a limit of 10 simultaneous users.  In fact, I'd be surprised to
hear that IIS would even install on a machine that identified itself as
running NTW.

The 10-connection limit in NTW was originally created to limit LAN
connections, which of course are substantially different from Web
connections; a Microsoft technical report even seems to say that winsock
connections are exempted, but that's not stated in the EULA.  The logical
thing would have been for Microsoft to exempt Web connections in the NTW
EULA and then actually to demonstrate some performance benefits in NTS. 
But then Netscape called in the Department of Justice about this and other
matters, and now it's probably imprudent for Microsoft to do anything but
maintain the status quo.

A not completely impartial discussion of this is at
<URL:http://www.ora.com/www/oracom/win/index.html> and
<URL:ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/windows/win95.update/ntnodiff.html>.

BTW, Microsoft has just released IIS 3.0 in the last couple of days. 
Required platform: NT Server 4.0.

Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu
Ohio Library and Information Network