World Wide Web Publishing Service and HTTP.SYS

Question

I was reading this article from Microsoft and in step 5 it says: The WWW Service uses the configuration information to configure HTTP.sys.

What exactly is the WWW service configure in HTTP.sys?
What is the purpose of the WWW service?
How is it different from the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS)?

Thank you!

Answer 1

In short, WWW service gets the configuration elements from applicationHost.config and applies the portion related to Windows HTTP API to the driver HTTP.sys.

The purpose of WWW service is roughly documented in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/get-started/introduction-to-iis/introduction-to-iis-architecture#how-the-www-service-works-in-iis

Don't try to acquire a deep understanding of such components at the beginning. They are not open sourced so he documentation is rather vague.

The same applies to WAS, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/get-started/introduction-to-iis/introduction-to-iis-architecture#windows-process-activation-service-was

If you are taking a course, just memorize the facts at this stage. Once you get more familiar with IIS daily operations, you will get more insights.