IP-Based Routing

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

With IIS 6.0, you can configure Web sites to listen on all available IP addresses or on an individual IP address. If you use multiple IP addresses to distinguish between different Web sites on the same server, you must configure IIS to assign each site a unique, static IP address.

Although it is simple to configure IP–based routing, this strategy typically is viable only for large corporations and ISPs. Unique IP addresses are in short supply, so it can be difficult and expensive to obtain a block of static IP addresses.

One advantage of IP–based routing is that it enables you to host multiple Web sites that require SSL on the same server. However, hosting a large number of sites that require SSL on the same server can degrade performance because so many requests have to be encrypted and decrypted.