IIS History

What was IIS called prior to its public release as IIS?

[casualsub]

A friend was asked this question in a job interview, I'm intrigued as to what the answer is, "what did IIS used to be called prior to its public release?"

Any ideas?

[bmcgee]

I don't know either, but if this interview was with any other company besides Microsoft...I don't think that was an appropriate question.

[hasbeen]

I'll keep looking, but found this so far:

The servers started delivering content on Windows NT 3.1 using the European Microsoft Windows Academic Consortium (EMWAC) WWW server software.

and then:

Around this mid-1995 timeframe, the microsoft.com Web servers were migrated to a pre-release version of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) because the EMWACS servers were straining to keep up with the burgeoning server loads.

Found these tidbits here. [microsoft.com]
Can't quite gauge whether EMWACS was IIS, but it's at least relevant to the discussion...

BTW, what job was he interviewing for??

[casualsub]

Thanks for the ideas so far, I particularly liked reading thru the tidbits.

The job was an intranet developer for a telecoms co.

I agree the question was a little unfair, but it was intended to see how you coped with a (resonably) unanswerable question, their explanation not mine, interview mumbo-jumbo if you ask me.

I have to say though it is an interesting question, and i would very much like to know the answer - if it was EMWACS I can see why they changed it...

[brotherhood of LAN]

Those interviewers have a whole lotta background stuff goin on in an interview.

The last interview I had could judge if I was successful or not purely on the choice of answer I use in a question (sounds silly) but I guess all they are trying to do is employ someone of the right "mould"

too true though, anyone who asks a "forward thinking MS question" should re-apply for their own job. But pre-mainstream-web times, i doubt there would be a fraction of the IT knowledge there is today, and on that note, alot of people dont know the basics behind the computers of today

<Having fun with dbase 2 and other ancient programs...lots of good insight by working with the old style "bare bones" software and hardware

[hasbeen]

Still no definitve answer...I posted the qestion to the Microsoft IIS Newsgroup. We'll see if that gets a response.

Darn it...now I can't get the question out of my head. I HAVE to know the answer. Thanks, casualsub!

[brotherhood of LAN]

I dont know how much relevance this has [microsoft.com...]

[JayC]

>>I agree the question was a little unfair, but it was intended to see how you coped with a (resonably) unanswerable question

That doesn't seem like a bad technique. I might use that myself! See if the applicant tries to bs through it, evades the question, or just straightforwardly says "I have no idea..." or what I might consider the best answer, "I have no idea, and I don't care." :)