[Samba] Samba performance

[Martin Wilson]

I am involved in the support of a digital audio editing and production system involving Windows 2k clients storing the audio assets on an AIX backend. The problem we have been experiencing is that we open audio files in the editor we are getting a minimum of 2 sec delay between pressing play and the start of the audio playback. Initial tests show that this delay can be up to 6 seconds and that typically there are four to five conversations between the samba server and the win2k DC before the file is begun to be streamed to the client. We haven't established yet whether these conversations are all relevant to the client or whether they are authentication requests for other clients. We are using pass-through authentication. We have noticed that despite our samba config being the default regarding autodisconnect  (ie never disconnect) we see the client application disconnect after a few seconds of inactivity within the audio editor. This leads us to suspect that the application is causing the disconnect by design.  Also, browsing the samba share in windows explorer causes a permanent samba connection, and in this situation we do not have the delay in streaming of the audio.

My questions are:
                  
                           Does samba process authentication requests in a serial manner, therefore are we getting a delay due to a queuing of requests?

                            If the above is true is it the case that samba is not recommended as  a viable solution for time critical applications?

                           Is it possible that we are having a problem with oplocks? I don't think is necessarily the case as there shouldn't be multiple users accessing 
                                the same audio file in this environment.

    many thanks in advance,
                                      Martin.