Microsoft Internet Server ‘95

Requirements Document

Note: Generally, this project is not being discusseded under NDA with any accounts or third parties.
Should you require permission to discuss this with a particular organization outside the company,
please contact the author.

Revision: 0.1
Date: January 12, 1995
Author(s): J. Allard (JAllard)
Document: projplan.doc
1 Catapult Overview/Positioning
The primary goal of the Catapult project is to establish Windows NT as a credible “Internet Server”
platform, bundling a BackOffice sales opportunity in every box. The tremendous momentum surrounding
the Internet has bolstered interest for Unix in corporations which have no prior investment in Unix, and
those which have made the decision to move away from Unix varients in favor of Windows NT. This trend
stems from the lack of NT support for common application protocols in use on the Internet such as
Internet Mail (SMTP), World-Wide-Web (HTTP), and Internet Name Services (DNS). The incredible
focus on the Internet in the media has only served to help Unix and hurt NT for businesses and other
organizations interested in using the Internet to reach new markets with their content. Substantial interest
within the company has broadened the goal of this document to also serve as a project plan for other
groups to understand our efforts.

As presently defined, the Catapult development project can be broken down into five functional areas:

· Internet Extensions for Win32: A set of APIs providing abstractions of common Internet protocols
for easy integration with Win32 applications
· Infrastructure Services: These components complement the base NT technologies to complete the
infrastructure and messaging requirements: SMTP, POP, NNTP, simple RIP routing and DNS
name services
· Publishing Service: These services implement the common Internet information sharing protocols:
FTP, Gopher, World-Wide-Web (or HTTP), NNTP (NetNews)
· Gateway Services: The Gateway Services allow an organization to connect it’s users to the Internet
in a safe, transport independent fashion to the Internet by implementing application-layer
gateways for FTP, Gopher and Web, caching, and policy control
· Client Components: Graphical Win32 components for Gopher, Web and FTP access for WfW3.11,
NT, Win95

2 Catapult Goals
The fundemental mission of the Catapult effort is:

“A Windows NT Server-based application providing safe and easy-to-use Internet connectivity and
publishing”

This breaks down into several specific goals:

· Easy installation, management and configuration: The product should be on par with an NT user’s
expectation of a well-designed server application
· Integration with Windows NT: Leverage all NT facilities - Remote Administration, Integration with
PerfMon, EventViewer, SNMP, etc.
· BackOffice Synergy: To the degree possible, integrate with SQL and Exchange to provide “best of
breed” services
· Offer a competitive feature set: We expect about a dozen Internet Server products to surface in ‘95.
Our basic functionality should be competitive.
· Design with an eye to Cairo: Administration should lean towards the Win95/Cairo look-and-feel,
design should facilitate a rapid migration to native Cairo. As we knew that time to market was
essential with an initial offering, we opted not to wait on Cairo for the administration of the services.

3 Specific Non-Goals

· Compete with packet-filter “firewall” products: Catapult’s gateway services should complement an
existing (or new) packet-filter product. Some simple packet-filtering will be enabled in Windows NT
Cairo, but native filter products will
4 Target Audience:
We believe this product will have broad appeal for a variety of organizations. In our design, feature set,
documentation and positioning, we will target the following specific audiences:

Audience Requirement
Large organizations (LORGs) Extensive Internet publishing, secure access, some internal publishing using standards s
Small/med organizations (SMORGs) Serious Internet publishing, simplified access (often sharing connectivity resources)
Government Extensive Internet publishing
Education/K-12 Simplified access (limited bandwidth), some simple publishing
Service/Content Providers Extensive Internet publishing

5 Competition

6 Outstanding Issues

7 Project Milestones
Milestone Goal Timeframe
M0 Bottom-up schedules complete 1/31/95
M1 Internal beta of Web/Gopher servers 3/15/95
M2 Internal pilot of Gateway server 5/15/95
M3 External Beta 1 (full product) 7/15/95
M4 External Beta2 9/15/95
M5 RTM 11/15/95
8 Win32 Extensions

9 Requirements

10 Competition
11 Publishing Services

12 Requirements

13 Competition
14 Infrastructure Services

15 Requirements

16 Competition
17 Gateway Services

18 Requirements

19 Competition
20 BackOffice Integration
21 Win95/Office Integration
Option to install admin tool on win95
22 Customer Scenerios

23 Information Publishing

24 Corporate Access Solution

25 SMORG using Catapult to both Publish and Access

26 Component Breakdown and Owners
27 Revision History