Difference Between Windows Authentication And Anonymous Authentication

What is Anonymous Authentication ?

In Anonymous Authentication, any user can access the Application. IIS allows all type of users to enter the Application without entering any credential. Anonymous Authentication can be enabled for both internet and intranet environment.


What is Windows Authentication ?

Windows Authentication is mainly used in Intranet Environment. We can enable Windows Authentication in IIS and IIS Express level. Windows Authentication is secure because the user name and password are hashed before sending across the network. There may be two types of protocols in Windows Authentication. Kerbose and NTLM. After windows authentication installation, the default protocol will be Kerbose.


How To Implement Windows and Anonymous Authentication?

For Implementing Windows Authentication, please follow the below link. Click Here For Implementing Windows Authentication In IIS and IIS Express
For Implementing Anonymous Authentication, please follow the below steps. On Run type inetmgr to open IIS. On IIS select your website. On Feature View, Click on the Authentication Icon. That will leads to Authentication tab. Right Click on the Anonymous Authentication and click the Enable Link as shown in the figure.




By this way Anonymous Authentication can be implemented In IIS


How To Implement Anonymous Authentication In IISExpress

Open the file C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents
\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.xml on Notepad. Search for node <authentication>. Inside <authentication> node, navigate to subnode <anonymousAuthentication>. Set enable as true inside <anonymousAuthentication>.

For all other sub nodes like <windowsAuthentication>, <basicAuthentication>, <digestAuthentication> etc... set enable as false. By this way we can Implement Anonymous Authentication In IISExpress.