smb://

[Michael B. Allen]

On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 10:13:05PM -0600, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> I assume that we will only use smb:// to connect to shares and not other 
> services, so there will be no need to specify a NetBIOS name suffix.  

Interesting but not programmatically practical as I do not believe all
names registered by a host are replicated by the browse list which is
where the information that would be displayed by the workgroup# semantic
would be obtained. It would require broadcasting node status requests
and then *trying* to capture the packet storm that followed. Get 10
people doing that on a regular basis and the Admins would descend.

But with such functionality you might list Microsoft Exchange MTA with
something like:

smb://workgroup#87#

or find where the user jdoe is logged in in anticipation of sending them
a win pop-up with:

smb://jdoe#03#

...etc. Also there is really no garantee that the service advertised
is really functional. For example W2K advertises some kind of Exchange
support by default yet I don't think that means you can send such a host
e-mail directly.

Along these lines one might more accurately target services by allowing
the Service field of the tree connect to be specified like:

smb://server|LPT1

or something but in practice I have a feeling this would be a total mess
not to mention you pushing the limits of how much you can obfuscate your
documentation :~)

Mike

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