Tim: >> The origins of SMB predates the common use of TCP/IP and DNS in a >> LAN, hence why it has other methods, and used to (if it doesn't >> still) default to using other techniques. Les: > I don't know about the rest of your content here, but TCP/IP predates > SMB by nearly 20 years. Yes, TCP/IP existed before SMB. But since we're chiefly talking about Windows networking, SMB's origins (e.g. LAN manager) typically used other protocols (NetBEUI, for instance) long before it was run over TCP/IP. Microsoft's use of TCP/IP with their systems on a LAN was a later thing. It was quite some time after Win95's birth before TCP/IP would become the usual protocol underneath SMB (at that stage, TCP/IP was still a user-configured add-on). Even if you installed file sharing, it would be yet another user-choice to use TCP/IP instead of another protocol. I missed out on making it more clear I'm talking about SMB on a LAN, and Microsoft Windows LANs, not just LANs. i.e. Windows networking. But I was talking about the "origins of "SMB," not the origins of LANs. And back then, TCP/IP wasn't what they were usually using. It was quite typical for your Windows networking to be done all over a NetBEUI protocol. And if you also wanted internet, you'd do that separately over TCP/IP. SMB seemed to work much better over NetBEUI (none of this "can't find the other machine" hassles), and you isolated your LAN traffic from internet traffic more (NetBEUI doesn't traverse a subnet), so you couldn't accidentally share your drive over the net. > Also SMB is a file serving process or protocol, not a networking > protocol which TCP/IP is. I know. -- (This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
