IIS question

[Phaelax]

When running IIS on 2k pro, is there a way to show the current connections, and which files are being accessed?

[bentkey]

No. The question actually has no meaning with any web server, because they don't maintain connections at all. Although you get the impression you are "connected" to a site, actaully you are only connected for the length of time it takes to send the requested page to your web browser and then you're disconnected until you request another page. This is why web connections are referred to as "stateless", because no state of connection is ever maintained. The best you can do is configure and examine the web server log files which attempt to do what you ask. But they are always considerably "after the fact" and only really approximate things. To make any sense of them you'll need a log analysis tool. AWStats and Analog are 2 free ones that come to mind, little bit of a job setting them up though. Hope it helps.

[Phaelax]

what about the ftp?

[bentkey]

Sorry, I missed your post. Ftp does use connected state and you can see the active connections in the ftp site properties box, but it won't show what the users are accessing. I really don't know if there is a way to do that with other software or not. ftp logging is similar to web logging.

[cscgal]

Question moved to IIS forum.

[blud]

Technically at any given time, you could run a netstat -an to get the sessions, then grab the output from a utility called filemon which monitors all file activity, you can't tell which ip is getting what but it does give you a good suggestion on how many connections there are and what % of them are grabbing a particular file.

[CSharper]

No. The question actually has no meaning with any web server, because they don't maintain connections at all. Although you get the impression you are "connected" to a site, actaully you are only connected for the length of time it takes to send the requested page to your web browser and then you're disconnected until you request another page. This is why web connections are referred to as "stateless", because no state of connection is ever maintained. The best you can do is configure and examine the web server log files which attempt to do what you ask. But they are always considerably "after the fact" and only really approximate things. To make any sense of them you'll need a log analysis tool. AWStats and Analog are 2 free ones that come to mind, little bit of a job setting them up though. Hope it helps.

Actually bentkey, the information you've provided is not accurate. First of all, the client's connection to a webserver (IIS in this case) doesn't simply die. The connection won't actually get tombstoned if the server has activated keep-alives in order to maintain said connection. This is done so that the server doesn't have to waste the resources of re-establishing a connection with each request.

Furthermore, while it is possible (albeit a poor approach) to go log monitoring, it is a much better idea to hook into IIS and read the requests as they come in. On that note, FTP does maintain a connection, and requests can be extrapolated in much the same way.

Now you know. :cool:

CSharper MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, MCAD, MCSD, MCT