Fastream IQ Web/FTP Server 11.5.5R

Fastream IQ Web/FTP Server is a secure, fast FTP server and robust multi-threaded Web server for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, featuring XML-based GUI remote 2-level administration scheme, CGI/ISAPI, separate upload/download speed limits, storage quotas, dynamic DNS, SSL and compression.

In my own opinion this is a quite good and secure HTTP/FTP server. There are a lot useful customizable settings in the GUI administration panel.

From the server manager you can add or remove server administrators and you can change their settings. There's a super admin tab where you can add HTTP or FTP servers, you can generate SSL certificates and public keys for those certificates.

If you want to enable advanced settings such as using an encrypted SSL connection or generating SSL certificates you will have to upgrade this server from the free, non-commercial version to the professional version. You can enable a 30 days trial of this version. The SSL certificate can be automatically generated by the server and you can use it for every encrypted connection to this server. This type of connection is featuring 128 bit strong encryption.

The other tabs of the GUI give you the possibility to manage the FTP/HTTP servers, the cache and the dynamic DNS. In order to use dynamic DNS you will need an account from www.no-ip.com or www.dyndns.org. These services have can be free or fee based, depending on the features you would need from them. The IP checking will be done at every 5 minutes.

Because there are a lot of settings in the FTP/HTTP area I won't write about them but I do strongly recommend something: if you are going to use this server for commercial activities is recommended for the administrator to study very well the documentation in order to discover every setting that might threat the server's security.

The thing I didn't like about this server was the support for PHP. This server doesn't come with built in PHP extensions and if you want to use PHP you will have to do it in command line mode by giving the path to the php-cgi.exe in the HTTP CGI configuration area. Sometimes this might be a problem because you will need a well configured php.ini file. Usually you will have to write it yourself. If you are going to use a mySQL database with the PHP support you will also need to install a mySQL server.

Pluses: it is a strong package with lots of advanced settings for your hosting needs. It has a free mode that you can use for non-commercial activities.

Drawbacks / flaws: it doesn't come with built in support for PHP and with a mySQL server for databases.

In conclusion: a good package with enough features that can satisfy both the advanced users and the beginners. I do not recommend this server for development activities though, because there are development packages which can do a better job.

version reviewed: 11.0.2R