Windows Sockets specifies a programming interface based on the familiar socket interface from the University of California at Berkeley. It includes a set of extensions designed to take advantage of the message-driven nature of Microsoft Windows. Version 1.1 of the specification was released in January 1993, and version 2.2.0 was published in May of 1996.8 http://www.microsoft.com and ftp.microsoft.com. Windows 2000 supports version 2.2, commonly referred to as Winsock2.