Windows authentication and IIS

If you select windows authentication for your ASP.NET application, you also have to configure authentication within IIS. This is because IIS provides Windows authentication.
IIS gives you a choice for four different authentication methods:
Anonymous,basic,digest and windows integrated If you select anonymous authentication, IIS doesn’t perform any authentication, Any one is allowed to access the ASP.NET application.
If you select basic authentication, users must provide a windows username and password to connect. How ever this information is sent over the network in clear text, which makes basic authentication very much insecure over the internet.
If you select digest authentication, users must still provide a windows user name and password to connect. However the password is hashed before it is sent across the network.
Digest authentication requires that all users be running Internet Explorer 5 or later and that windows accounts to stored in active directory.
If you select windows integrated authentication, passwords never cross the network. Users must still have a username and password, but the application uses either the Kerberos or challenge/response protocols authenticate the user. Windows-integrated authentication requires that all users be running internet explorer 3.01 or later Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography. Kerberos is a solution to network security problems. It provides the tools of authentication and strong cryptography over the network to help to secure information in systems across entire enterprise