What is ASP.NET Development Server?

In VS 2005, file system websites are hosted on the new local web server called” ASP.NET Development Server” by default instead of IIS. This server dynamically chooses the port and hosts the website for local requests only. As a part of Framework 2.0 WebDev.WebServer.exe program runs as development server and host the website whenever website is run in the VS.
Now IIS does not installed along with WinXP or Win2003 like previous versions of Windows, you needs to install it separately therefore if you are developing websites using VS 2005, you don’t have to worry about the web server to host your website as asp.net development server will take care of it.
This program is found at (%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.XXXXX) location.
You can also host website manually using this program.

Syntax: WebDev.WebServer.exe [/port:] /path: [/vpath:]

Like: webdev.webserver.exe /port:4955 /path:"c:\RnD\WebSite1" /vpath:”/WebSite1”

Here you can assign any port no you want.


Difference between ASP.NET Development Server and IIS Server
Below are some notable differences:

•Development server only accepts authenticated requests on the local computer as it runs under the security context of currently authenticated user account. It means it doesn’t run under less privileged ASPNET account. Where as IIS by default runs under ASPNET account.
•Unlike IIS, Development server can only serve local requests. It will not serve pages to another computer.
•Unlike IIS, Development server can only serve resources like files that are within the application scope.
•IIS provides other services like SMTP, FTP etc. that development server does not provides so if your application has e-mail sending functionality or file download functionality, you would have to use IIS server.

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/58wxa9w5(VS.80).aspx

Website Logging and AWStats Tool

Analysis of a website is very important if you want to optimize the performance of the website. The informations like from where most of the web traffic is coming or who is eating up your sites bandwidth are very handy for improving your websites performance. These informations are logged by the web servers that can be processed by some tools like AWStats, Analog, Webalizer etc... into some graphical charts for easy analysis.
Web logging is by default enabled in IIS5.1 web server and the data is stored in the
C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\W3SVC1 location in the form of text files with the name format like exyymmdd.log, here yy- year, mm-month and dd-day.
By default some selected properties are logged so you can customize the logging information to your requirement.For that -
Open the website properties window and click on the properties button in the enable logging section. Extented logging properties window will open. Here check & uncheck the properties you want to log like you you want to measure bandwidth comsumption of your site, check Bytes Sent option or if you want to know who is sending most of the traffic , check Referer option.

AWStats Tool

This is the tool to analyse this web logging information and show it with graphics chart.This tool is free for use.
Check out below link for more information on this tool.

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/