Different zones in SharePoint

Zones represent different logical paths (URLs) of gaining access to the same Web application. You can use zones to enforce different access and policy conditions for group of users.

Each Web application can have a maximum of 5 zones.The 5 possible zones are:

• Default
• Intranet
• Internet
• Custom
• Extranet

When you create a Web application, the Default zone is created. You can then extend the Web application to create other zones.

We can set "Windows Authentication" for Intranet, "Form Authentication" for the extranet and "Form Authentication with allow anonymous" for the Internet.

The cache settings are also different depending on the zone. You can configure the cache to behave differently depending on which zone you are.

Each zone can only be selected once per Web application. For example, you can only have one Default zone in a Web application.

Each zone is represented by a different Web site in IIS.