Definition of Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) in The Network Encyclopedia.
What is MCIS (Microsoft Commercial Internet System)?
A comprehensive, integrated, commercial-grade Internet server suite aimed at commercial service providers (CSPs). Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) includes integrated applications in four areas:
Membership services:
The MCIS Membership System integrates with other MCIS services to enable CSPs to manage and deploy Internet services for a community of members. CSPs can authenticate users, authorize access to various services, and customize services to meet the needs of their membership.
Community services:
MCIS includes a commercial-grade Internet standards–based mail system called MCIS Mail that can scale to millions of users. MCIS Mail blocks unsolicited mail (spam) by not relaying Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) mail. MCIS also includes an Internet standards–based Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) news service called MCIS News for hosting electronic discussion groups and community bulletin boards. MCIS News can support tens of thousands of concurrent users and provides public, read-only, moderated, or authenticated newsgroups. MCIS also includes conferencing services through MCIS Chat for text-based real-time collaboration. This is the IRC-based Chat service included with Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. It can be used along with the Microsoft NetMeeting conferencing software client to engage in real-time conferencing.
Hosting services:
MCIS includes Microsoft Site Server, Commerce Edition, a suite of Internet server applications for building e-commerce Web sites. Site Server, Commerce Edition, lets your customers publish content, personalize delivery of information, analyze site usage, and build full-featured commerce-enabled business solutions.
Network access services:
Through Internet Connection Services for Microsoft Remote Access Service (RAS), CSPs can deploy and manage virtual private networks (VPNs) and roaming services for their customers. Wizards simplify the process of customizing and preconfiguring dialers, which can be branded with a CSP’s icons and logos. Dialers automatically configure client machines for Internet access. Phone books can be centrally managed to provide users with the most current network access numbers.