About Internet Security and Acceleration Server

Microsoft® Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000 integrates firewall and cache features to secure networks and improve their performance. ISA Server is an extensible platform that provides security, hardware redundancy and load balancing, efficient use of network resources by means of sophisticated caching mechanisms, and administration tools. ISA Server runs on computers that use the Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server operating system, and relies on the features and functionality of the operating system.

ISA Server consists of several technologies:

• Firewall service.
• Web proxy service.
• Secure network address translation (SecureNAT).
• Advanced caching capabilities, including RAM caching and use of the Cache Array Routing Protocol (CARP).
• Bandwidth control.
• Static and dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) packet filtering.
• Alerting.

For more information, see the ISA product documentation.

Two editions of ISA Server are available: ISA Server Standard Edition and ISA Server Enterprise Edition. Initially, an organization may decide to purchase ISA Server Standard Edition. As the organization grows, and the need to communicate with the Internet increases, consider upgrading from the ISA Server Standard Edition to the Enterprise Edition. The differences between the editions are documented in Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition.

This section contains the following topics:

• Installing the ISA Server Software Development Kit
• About this Documentation
• ISA Server Overview
• About ISA Server Administration
• About the ISA Server Firewall
• About the ISA Server Cache
• About ISA Server Rules
• About Authentication in ISA Server
• About ISA Server Services
• About ISA Server Clients
• About ISA Server Setup