Longhorn server has soom cool features but only a handful get any attention. Buried in the feature set is a complete overhaul of the tcp/ip stack. When I first heard about massive speed improvements with file transfers from using Longhorn, I was skeptical (which I usually am believe it or not of such claims). However, the source was had a lot of credibitily - it was Casey Jacobs from who manages Microsoft.com. Over luch one day he was detailing to me how they had done some preliminary testing on file transfer speeds. The result were so astounding they rechecked their numbers. I have been hesitant to make any public claims since I haven't confirmed their testing nor has the IIS team formally tested this scneario (yet). But I found where Casey blogged about it.

(http://blogs.technet.com/mscom/archive/2006/07/11/441154.aspx)

 Below are results from copying a 199MB file between Microsoft data centers:

• Pull from W2K3 in CA to W2K3 in WA:  ~2:12
• Pull from W2K3 in CA to Longhorn in WA:  ~0:12
• Pull from Longhorn in CA to Longhorn in WA:  ~0:04

This is a big deal improvement. IIS 7 will of course benefit from this. Based on this, we can speculate that IIS 7 will make an oustanding base for delivering large media files, VPCs, gigabytes of log files or other reports.

In fact, it might be possible for your Windows 2003 Server, when upgraded, to suddenly saturate your bandwidth!  Casey's tests reported they achieved >890Mbs per server. 

Casey quickly gets to this point: