grassieDgrace

For future reference, just want to post another work-around in setting a maximum users in XP Pro IIS Server.

It allows only one root website, and a maximum of ten concurrent connections to that website. Microsoft really, really doesn’t want us hosting slashdot.org on our XP Pro box. These limits are so aggressive that they can get in the way of legitimate localhost development. But there are workarounds.

• Increase the 10 concurrent connection limitAre you getting 403.9 “Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected” errors on an XP Pro website? You’re limited by default to 10 concurrent connections by design, but this can be increased. First, make sure your default windows script host is set to the console (cscript.exe) one
• cscript //h:cscriptNext, let’s increase the connection limit to 40.
  C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil set w3svc/MaxConnections 40
  Note that this is a hard-coded limit; it can’t be increased any further unless you like patching windows system files. You can, however, make the IIS connection timeout more aggressive so connections don’t last as long.
• Run more than one root websiteIIS 5.1 only allows one root website. This is fine if your websites run under subfolders:
• http://localhost/MyWebsite1
• http://localhost/MyWebsite2But it’s kind of a pain if your websites must run as root, or need to be tested when running as root:

  http://MyWebsite1/

  http://MyWebsite2/

  In that case, you’d have to edit your hosts file, and switch the default home directory for the default website. But there’s a better way. You can hack up multiple web sites in IIS 5.1 via command line tricks, or you can use this nifty little GUI utility which automates that for you. It works great– you’ll even see multiple websites show up in the IIS manager. But bear in mind that, unlike the server versions of IIS, only one website can be active at any given time.

Signed off
Graz