The NEOS Server is the first network-enabled problem-solving environment for a wide class of applications in business, science, and engineering.

The NEOS Server is designed as a generic application service provider (ASP). We envision scientific applications, but the generic implementation and concept of the NEOS Server could help existing business offer services to customers or to employees in multiple offices with software resources spread across locations.

Upon installation, the NEOS Server will automatically create:

• a WEB site for your ASP,
• CGI scripts to parse generic WEB submissions,
• scripts to parse email and TCP/IP socket submissions,
• a database for tracking submission information with appropriate tools,
• step-by-step WEB page instructions for adding your own services to your NEOS Server, and
• administrative tools that help you to build a collection of services that can be accessed by users everywhere through your site's NEOS Server.

The NEOS Server system guides user requests through the following process:

• The user submission is sent to the central Server machine,
• The NEOS Server parses submissions and writes their key pieces of information to separate files that you specify for each type of service you want to provide.
• The NEOS Server sends job request files to your geographically distributed solver stations and executes their solver software.
• Your existing software product (or a wrapper around it) reads the user's request information, processes it, and sends a solution to the problem back to the NEOS Server.
• The NEOS Server returns results to the user, who has now been able to use your software product without needing to download, install, or run it on their machine.

The NEOS Server system is designed to run on a Unix platform with fairly standard software such as tar, gzip, Perl(5), sendmail, and POP3 mail service.

In order to track interest in the server, we ask that you provide your email address before proceeding to the download site. We will mail you about substantial changes in future releases.