I am in the minority of people that think Network Security is an easier class than IIS. There were two back to back projects in Network Security where ~20% of the total project grade was awarded for a single task that was considerably harder than the average difficulty of the project. There was a time during the second of these two projects when I thought that if this trend continued, I might not pass the class. I did both of the extra credit assignments (small project and a quiz) which gave me a 6% boost to my final grade (8% boost was possible). I will echo what other students have said and mention that it is unecessary to take IIS first before this class. They're almost unrelated.