3.3. Common Internet File System and Server Message Blocks
The Common Internet File System (CIFS) has its roots in the Server Message Block technology first introduced in the days of MS-DOS 3.3. Server Message Block is popularly referred to as SMB. SMB defines a protocol for a client to send file system–oriented requests (open file, read, write, lock, and close) to a file server.
Before we dive into the technical details of CIFS and SMB, a small digression explaining the political difference between the two is in order. Originally there was only SMB technology, used as a client/server file system protocol in the PC world. In the mid-1990s Microsoft rechristened its implementation of SMB as CIFS and positioned CIFS as a competitor to both WebNFS ...
Get Inside Windows Storage: Server Storage Technologies for Windows® 2000, Windows® Server 2003, and Beyond now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
