[Samba] NetBIOS over TCP/IP versus direct hosting over TCP/IP

[John H Terpstra]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Richard C. Wargo wrote:

>
> >From Microsoft web site (Windows 2000 Resource Kit):
>
> "Windows 2000 uses NetBIOS over TCP/IP to communicate with prior versions of
> Windows NT and other clients, such as Windows 95. However, the Windows 2000
> redirector and server components now support direct hosting for
> communicating with other computers running Windows 2000. With direct
> hosting, NetBIOS is not used for name resolution. DNS is used for name
> resolution and the Microsoft networking communication is sent directly over
> TCP without a NetBIOS header. Direct hosting over TCP/IP uses TCP port 445
> instead of the NetBIOS session TCP port 139.
> By default, both NetBIOS and direct hosting are enabled, and both are tried
> in parallel when a new connection is established. The first to succeed in
> connecting is used for any given attempt. NetBIOS over TCP/IP support can be
> disabled to force all traffic to use TCP/IP direct hosting."
> True or False:  SAMBA does not support TCP/IP direct hosting as defined by
> Microsoft.
> If I disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP support on a Win2K client, I lose
> visibility to my SAMBA server.  When I re-enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, I can
> access my SAMBA server.
>
> Am I missing something?  I am using the 3.0.2a sources.

Check your smb.conf man page for the "netbios disable" parameter.

If you disable use of NetBIOS you must create appropriate DNS records for
the Samba server so that clients will be able to find it. See the
Samba-HOWTO-Collection (ref. http:///www.samba.org/samba/docs/) chapter on
Network Browsing for information regarding important DNS parameters when
using NetBIOSless CIFS (TCP/IP direct hosting).

Answer: Samba-3 does support TCP/IP direct hosting. If you find a problem
with it then please report details to the samba-technical at samba.org
mailing list.

- John T.
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org