<p>I'm look for a GIS/Mapping tool that will give me easy SERVER-SIDE access to route information (specifically, trip time and distance) in an ASP.NET web application.</p>

<p>From what I can tell, Google and Yahoo maps do everything client-side in javascript, but neither provide services to retrieve just the route information. I'm interested in both free and paid products. Also, if you have experience with a product I like to hear about what you think (complexity of API, runtime performance, likes, dislikes, etc.)</p>

We've had success with using the web services from Map24 (
http://developer.navteq.com/site/global/zones/ms/index.jsp
) to do some GIS-y type things. They have a web service for doing routing (
http://developer.navteq.com/site/global/zones/ms/map24webservices/map24routingservice.jsp
) which I had a quick play with last year.
There's a bit of a learning curve wih their APIs but once you get past it their stuff is quite powerful and performs really well.
Phil