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Limiting Connections

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

Connection limits restrict the number of simultaneous client connections to your Web sites and your Web server. Limiting connections conserves memory and protects against malicious attacks designed to overload your Web server with thousands of client requests.

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform the following procedure or procedures. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /user:Administrative_AccountName "mmc %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc".

Procedures

To set a global WWW or FTP service connection limit

  1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, right-click the Web Sites or FTP Sites folder, and then click Properties.

  2. Click the FTP Site tab to limit connections on the FTP service, or click the Performance tab to limit connections on the WWW service.

  3. Click the Connections limited to option, and in the box next to it, type the maximum number of simultaneous connections you want to allow on your Web or FTP service.

  4. Click Apply, and then click OK.

To set a Web or FTP site connection limit

  1. In IIS Manager, expand the local computer, expand the Web Sites or FTP Sites folder, right-click the Web or FTP site on which you want to set the connections limit, and click Properties.

  2. Click the FTP Site tab to limit connections on the FTP site, or click the Performance tab to limit connections on the Web site.

  3. Click the Connections limited to option, and in the box next to it, type the maximum number of simultaneous connections you want to allow on your Web or FTP site.

  4. Click Apply, and then click OK.

  • For more detailed information about IIS connection limits, including the security ramifications of selecting the Unlimited option, see Limiting Connections to Manage Resources.

  • For more information about improving the performance of IIS network resources using related features like HTTP Compression and bandwidth throttling, see Administering Network Resources.