Microsoft .NET Server Solutions for the Enterprise

Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000 provides firewall and caching features that organizations can use to secure their networks and improve network performance.

Using ISA Server 2000, organizations can implement security policies by configuring rules that specify which sites, protocols, and content can pass through the computer running ISA Server 2000. By monitoring requests and responses between the Internet and internal clients, ISA Server 2000 controls who can access specific computers on a corporate network. ISA Server 2000 also controls which computers on the Internet internal clients can access. The ISA computer or array of computers are located at the edge of the organization's network, which means they are well positioned to increase performance by caching data, whether this data is flowing from the Internet into the network or from the network to external clients.

The following points summarize the functionality of ISA Server 2000:

• Security. ISA Server 2000 includes a firewall service, application filters, a w3proxy Web proxy service, and Web (ISAPI) filters. The ISA firewall provides dynamic IP packet filtering, which evaluates packets, and Secure Network Address Translation (SecureNAT), which enables NAT clients to connect to the Internet through ISA Server 2000.
• Caching. ISA Server 2000 maintains a centralized cache of frequently requested Internet objects that all ISA Server 2000 clients can access. ISA Server 2000 also allows distributed content caching among multiple ISA Server 2000 hosts. Organizations can implement distributed caching with domain arrays, chains, or a combination of both.
• Administration. Administrators can configure ISA Server 2000 by using the ISA management tool or by invoking the ISA Server 2000 administration COM object through scripting.

The following illustration shows where ISA Server 2000 resides in a typical enterprise network.

Internet Security and Accelerating Server 2000