smb clients and performance

[Roeland M.J. Meyer]

At 04:30 AM 9/30/97 +1000, Steve Jones wrote:
>
>On Sep 29,  1:45pm, Darrin M. Gorski wrote:
> Subject: Re: smb clients and performance
>
>> MS Cleints will broadcast even if there is no samba server (for example,
>> you use NT instead). That's the default method of resolving names. It is
>> not, however, all that taxing on the network. We have over 800 MS clients
>> on 25 subnets, and we can use Samba, AND NT servers (not to mention
>> PCNFS) with no throughput problems.

>You say that this is the default behaviour.  But can this
>be configured otherwise?  If I understand correctly,
>the plan is to abandon netBEUI in order to forego the
>broadcasting of these clients.  In other words, do these
>clients *always* behave this way under NT or is there another
>mode of operation?

Well, they send out probes on a regular basis. If you have partitioned your
LAN properly, or set proper broadcast domain boundaries in your switches,
then it shouldn't be a problem. Understand that Windows machines do this
regardless of whether, or not, a server is on the LAN. My sub-net can be
absolutely quiescent and the packet indicator light, on the router, still
blips occasionaly, even when the Linux servers are completely off-line.
This is on a LAN with no NetBEUI drivers loaded and running 'pure' TCP/IP,
on WinNTws40SP3. 

>This raises another question or two (please excluse
>my ignorance).  Do MS clients such as winfile the NET
>commands in the DOS box always use netBEUI for netBIOS or
>can they use TCP/IP instead (I have a limited understanding
>of protocols used by MS)? 

Yes, they can use pure TCP/IP for the Win3.11 and WfW machines. DOS has
another problem. But, I haven't used DOS for a looong time. The last I used
the WfW, I used the MS-TCP stack and it worked just dandy *and* I ditched
the NetBIOS/NetBEUI stuff. There is a dialog box to let you do that.
However, it's been 2 years since I saw WfW, I recommend you get equal
distance from that pile of dreck. Why are you hesitating going to 'pure'
TCP/IP?

> My understanding has been that
>netBIOS can sit atop either netBEUI *or* TCP/IP.  But, even
>if this is true, will the MS clients work that way.  More
>to the point, will they cease to continually broadcast.

Yes, they will work.. What Samba does is NetBUIE over TCP/IP, near as I can
understand. This is also what the MS-TCP stack does. I ran like that for a
while, with ALL drivers loaded, during transition. It's a simple test to
perform. Just load them and see what happens. You aren't going to hurt
anything. 

You *can* run multiple protocols on a LAN. I was running IPS/SPX,
AppleTalk, NetBIOS, and TCP/IP for a while. The only thing I route is IP,
so none of that *other* junk was seen outside the sub-net. I did have to
have a separate card, and cable, for IBM TokenRing, though. Same, for the
SNA connection. <grin>

It is possible to have workstations talk to each other with NetBIOS and
talk to the servers with TCP/IP, although I can not imagine, outside of
security, why anyone would want to do that.

>I probably *could* have posed the above questions more
>awkwardly, I just didn't try hard enough!  ;^).

I think you did just fine <grin>

___________________________________________________
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993)
e-mail:		mailto:rmeyer at mhsc.com
Personalweb pages:	http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site:	http://www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________
"The FBI doesn't want to read encrypted documents,
   they want to read YOUR encrypted documents."