meaning of smb://<IP addr> (was Re: libsmbclient and IP numbers)

[Christopher R. Hertel]

> On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> 
> > My gut feeling is that if people put in an IP address, they are
> > referring to a specific server, so they expect to see the list of
> > shares exported by the server.
> 
> Sounds reasonable.

Yes.  It's in an appendix to the Internet Draft.  See:

  http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-crhertel-smb-url-01.txt

When you enter an IP address as part of the SMB URL you can only go to
that specific machine.  When you get there, what do you look for?  I
suppose you could do an Adapter Status and see if there is a #1D name in
the list, but since no workgroup was specified as part of the URL string
you won't know if that's really what was wanted.  The solution is to
assume that anything that is *not* a NetBIOS name must refer to an SMB
server. 

Note that the above applies only in a pre-port 445 environment.  If port
445 (Windows 2K and beyond) is being used then lots of things change. 
It's easy to extend the SMB URL to handle SMB connections to port 445
using non-NBT packets (SMB native over TCP).  The problem with port 445 is
that all of the supporting protocols change.  This means that the
semantics change.  I've been wrestling with trying to devise a standard
for a CIFS URL form, and lots of people tell me that it can and should be
done, but I don't know yet if it there are practical ways to handle a CIFS
URL that encompases both the NBT and non-NBT support protocols (service
browsing, authentication, etc). 

Chris -)-----

-- 
Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services

    Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them
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    them you will reach your destiny.  --Carl Schultz