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<P class=header-page>E-mail AutoDiscovery Service Business Proposal</P>
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<P class=header>Overview:</P>
<HR SIZE=1>
<P><b>NOTE:</b> <font color="#4E8FF1">AutoDiscovery is a proposed feature
for Whistler. The feature is contingent upon microsoft.com running
the server-side service. We need microsoft.com to decide if the service
will be hosted before we can decide to take this feature. </font>
<P>
<P>Getting Email is one of the top user scenarios. Getting an email account
<i> configured</i> is such a difficult task that it is the #1 PSS problem
for both Outlook and Outlook Express. The problem is that email
accounts can use one of three categories of email programs: 1) standards
based (POP3, IMAP, DAV); 2) proprietary (AOL, MSN, MAPI, Lotus Notes); or 3) web based (juno.com, geocities.com). Even if the user
knows what protocol to use, it's still difficult to find the exact settings.
For example, the following settings are needed for MSN:
<ul>
<li>Protocol: POP3/SMTP</li>
<li>POP Server: pop.mail.msn.com</li>
<li>SMTPServer: smtp.mail.msn.com</li>
<li>POP SPA: on</li>
<li>SMTP SPA: on</li>
<li>LoginName: "MSN\<username>"</li>
</ul>
<P>
<P>AutoDiscovery is half client software and half server-side
service. The client software will take an email address, download
the email settings from a server, and then launch the correctly type of
email program. If the email provider doesn't provide the
downloadable settings, we want the user to fallback to a microsoft.com
server that will contain the settings for the top 30 most commonly used
email providers. Since the top 30 email providers have so much
market share (AOL, MSN, Hotmail, etc.), this service will solve the
problem for about 85% of our customers. The settings are returned by a web
server via ASP scripts that return an XML file for the email provider.
<P>
<P>Since we are using a generic web server, one server would be able to
support 100 million customers. We will request 3 servers to allow
for growth and so a single hardware failure would not affect the service.
<P>
<P>The microsoft.com team would be responsible for:
<ul>
<li>Setting up 3 web servers (Win2k + IIS) behind a Round Robin type DNS
server.</li>
<li>Maintain the servers (backup, restore, and hardware failure
recovery).</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p>The Windows User Experience team or Office will be responsible for:</p>
<ul>
<li>Paying for the servers</li>
<li>Providing the content (ASP & xml files)</li>
<li>Any content maintenance. Updating the content is optional
because we are under no obligation to provide this service.
Updating content consists of viewing the most frequently used sites
and adding or deleting XML files as needed.</li>
</ul>
<P>
<P class=header><b>How AutoDiscovery Works:</b></P>
<HR SIZE=1>
<p> AutoDiscovery will first contact the owner of the email account.
If the user enters "<a href="mailto:JoeUser@yahoo.com">JoeUser@yahoo.com</a>",
we first contact <a href="http://_AutoDiscover.yahoo.com/_AutoDiscover/default.asp">http://_AutoDiscover.yahoo.com/_AutoDiscover/default.asp</a>.
If that doesn't return any results, we contact <a href="http://_AutoDiscover.yahoo.com/_AutoDiscover/default.asp">http://yahoo.com/_AutoDiscover/default.asp</a>.
If that doesn't return any results, we contact <a href="http://_AutoDiscover.yahoo.com/_AutoDiscover/default.asp">http://adservice.microsoft.com/default.asp</a>.
Since yahoo.com is likely to be in the top 30 most used email providers, we
will return the settings if their web server doesn't.</p>
<P> </P>
<P> </P>
<P> </P>
<P><A href="#top"><IMG border=0 height=26 src="top.gif" width=23></A>
<P>
<P class=header><b>Setting up the Server:</b></P>
<HR SIZE=1>
<P>The server is easy to setup because it is a stock web server.
Setup instructions:</P>
<ul>
<li>Install Windows 2000 server with IIS.</li>
<li>Copy everything under \\bryanst6\nt\inetcore\outlookexpress\autodiscovery\msservice\wwwroot\ to %SystemRoot%\inetpub\wwwroot\.</li>
<li>Open IIS's Performance Tab. Select "More than 100,000". (For Perf)</li>
<li>Open IIS's Home Directory Tab. Turn off "Log
Visits". Make sure that only "Read" is
selected. Select "Low (IIS Process)". (For Perf)</li>
<li>Open IIS's Server Extensions Tab. Turn off "Enable
Authoring". (For Security)</li>
<li>Open IIS's Web Site Tab. Turn off "Enable Logging".
(For Perf)</li>
<li>Since the machine will have 4 processors, the number of theads IIS should use should be increased to about 20. (For Perf)</li>
</ul>
<pre>
<A href="#top"><IMG border=0 height=26 src="top.gif" width=23></A></pre>
<P>
<P class=header><b>Server Performance:</b></P>
<HR SIZE=1>
<p class="MsoNormal">The goal is to have the capacity to server 100
million users. When the user asks to get their email, the
information retrieved from the server will be stored locally to minimize
the load on the server. This allows the service to be used only once
when the email account is setup.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To be generous, we will assume the each user will use
the service 10 times a year. Calculate by:</p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in">Assuming
users will format their hard drives, reinstall the OS, and want to
reconfigure their email accounts twice a year.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in">Users
will reinstall their software both at work and at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>(total so far is 4 times yearly)</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in">Users
will roam to other places <span style="mso-spacerun: yes">(Library,
Airport, Kiosk, visiting family, etc)</span> and have the service
configure their email.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This
will happen 6 times per year per user.</li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p>
</o:p>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Server:<o:p>
</o:p>
</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Microsoft.com would host the machines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Each machine would have 4 processors and 512 MB of RAM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>This kind of a machine can easily handle 400 requests/second.</p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l2 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list .5in">At
400 r/s, one server can handle 34.56 million requests a day.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l2 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list .5in">That
is 12.303 billion a year, if the load is evenly balanced</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list:l2 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list .5in">That
is 1.2 billion a year at 10% capacity, which will allow for spikes in
usage.</li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In order to server 100 million users, each using the
server 10 times a year, we will need to handle 1 billion
requests/year. At 400 requests/second, one server can handle 100
million users, while it runs at 10% of capacity. We will want to
have 3 servers which will <span style="mso-spacerun: yes">allow for
growth, hardware failure, or spikes in usages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">Note: The network
traffic will vary with the settings being downloaded, but it should remain
under 781 bytes per request. (188 bytes for the HTTP GET Request and
593 bytes for the HTTP Response)</span></p>
<P>
<A href="#top"><IMG border=0 height=26 src="top.gif" width=23></A></P>
<P> </P>
<P class=header><b>Testing:</b>
</P>
<HR>
ADStress.exe is a stress app that will test the server's throughput.
It will create a specified number of threads on a test machine and each
thread will flood the server with requests. It will then generate
failure rates and requests per second statistics.
<p> </p>
<p>Usage:</p>
<p>ADStress.exe -t 10 -s 100000 yahoo.com</p>
<p>This will create 10 threads to work together to generate 100,000
requests to the server for the email account for "Yahoo.com".</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Specify the server in the registry:</p>
<p>HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\JustWorks\AutoDiscovery\GlobalServices,
REG_SZ, 100=http://adservice.microsoft.com/default.asp?</p>
<P><A href="#top"><IMG border=0
height=26 src="top.gif"
width=23></A></P>
<P> </P>
<P class=header><b>Security:</b>
</P>
<HR>
<b>Content is Public:</b>
<p>The content returned from the server is public information. This
information is normally available on the email service provider's web
site. We will get permission from the service provider before we
provide the information.</p>
<p> </p>
<b>Usage Statistics:</b>
<p>The only information we need to keep private is the statistics of which
email provider is used. When requests are made, we store statistics
on which email provider is used (yahoo.com, juno.com, etc.) in ASP
Application environment variables. Login.asp and will admin.asp will
allow an administrator to obtain these statistics. They will be
protected with a password login. This will allow us to gauge the
success rate of the service and when we should update the XML files. </p>
<p> </p>
<b>Maintaining the Content: </b>(XML files)
<p>We will use which ever mechanism the microsoft.com team recommends to
securely add, delete, and replace the .xml files on the server. This
will probably be PubWiz which uses NTLM authentication.</p>
<p> </p>
<P><A href="#top"><IMG border=0 src="top.gif" width="23" height="26"></A></P>
<P> </P>
<P class=header><b>Related Information:</b>
</P>
<HR>
<ul>
<li>AutoDiscovery <a href="http://bryanst6/JustWorks/AutoDiscovery/AutoDiscovery.htm">Overview</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bryanst6/JustWorks/AutoDiscovery/rfc.htm">AutoDiscovery
RFC</a> (Net Protocol)
</li>
<li><a href="http://bryanst6/JustWorks/AutoDiscovery/">AutoDiscovery
Status</a>
</li>
</ul>
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<P class=modified>last updated on <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%m/%d/%y" startspan -->04/11/00<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" endspan i-checksum="12236" -->
by <a href="mailto:BryanSt@microsoft.com">BryanSt</a> </P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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