Confused about IIS, help appreciated

Hi. I'm a little bit confused about IIS. I just wanted to test some .ASP files. So I looked online and the overwhelming suggestion was to install the windows component of IIS, which I did, for Windows XP Professional. I then put my test.asp file into the newly made wwwroot directory and put into my browser the http://localhost/test.asp and it worked fine.

My concern is that all I wanted to do was test an .ASP file. But it now appears as though I have created a web server of some sort. At this stage, does anybody else have access to my "webpage" (the .asp file I guess) or the files in my wwwroot directory (on the network or otherwise) besides through my computer?

I've looked everywhere and I can't seem to find an answer. Any clarification would be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

I'm no gun on IIS, but as a local web server, nobody else should have access to your files.

This is providing there are no security issues, with internet hackers.

I've run PWS under Win98 for years and have recently upgraded to XP 64+ and having your
pc setup as a local web server should make no difference how your pc operates with other
applications.

Cheers

Graham McAllister

Well, IIS is certainly "a web server of some sort"

If you run IIS you're running a web server, no doubt of it. If you don't want other computers to access your web server make sure you have a firewall that blocks the http port from your IIS computer.