What IS netBIOS anyway???

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Cheers Clyde, Id totaly forgot about MAC addressing in the lower layers of the stack.

So it would seem that netbios HAS to ride ontop of other protocols (TCP/IP, SPX/IPX, NetBEUI) to be able to resolve IP's to Physical MAC addresses.

ThanKs (Dont appologise for muddying the waters, Its like I said, I'd prefer to Know everything and not leave out a single detail).

 

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You are correct. I left that part out not to make things more complex.

 

I try to understand CIFS and I know CIFS and Netbios are related although still did not understand it quite. My main question I would like to answer is
can I use CIFS between two computers to share files when the computers are in two different networks possibly separated by firewalls?

As much as I read, if two computers are in the same lan then CIFS can be made to work. The computers resolve each other through netbios and they can share files. However, I couldn't figure out if the same setup would work if two computers are in separate networks. I read that CIFS can be made to work over TCP/IP but I do not know if it would use ports that are possibly blocked by firewalls.

I appreciate any comments.

 

WOW something that actually explains NetBIOS in a way someone can understand!!!! But, according to this article it is still used and required for internet access. So, please let me know what you think afer reading this.

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212633,00.html

If that is read, and we still we *don't* need it, does that mean I should disable this "device" to make the computer work faster because it has a high overhead? I like to make sure my computer can connect to any possible network it comes across, so if the performace increase isn't high and disabling this might prevent me from connecting somewhere, I'd want to leave it on... but for significant slowing I'd turn it off.

 

Err, it doesn't mention Internet access in that article?

All you need to connect to the Internet or other computers in your local network is *TCP/IP* nothing else.

Sure remove NetBIOS/NetBEUI by all means, it will cut down chatter on your local network and possibly remove a small overhead in your PCs processing power. Though that's likely to be negligible.

 

The article said it was at the "base" of ethernet.

Of course there could be many different meanings to the word "message;" they might just mean a "Messenger Service" type thing.

 

No it doesn't say that either.. it says it is used with Ethernet or Token Ring.. these are network topologies, think hardware, cables and network cards etc. You do not need netBIOS for Ethernet to work.

I think they mean message as in a group of packets containing data.

 

Yes I know I had to hit the link to see it exactly, it said "de facto standard," not "base", but "everyone uses it" in 2007 would imply we need it... and I said I am aware "messages" could mean lots of different things, but if it means packets in this case that would be the one that we would need... according to that article anyway. I am aware thatthe article disagrees with most of what I read in this thread, so that's part of why I posted it.. the thread says it's a "standard" which would basically mean we need it, not to connect to ethernet but yes if the ethernet we are trying to connect to needs it, then we would... since I cannot imagine someone who would not want their computer to connect to any available network possible, seems to me we'd want it on then (if a laptop)... but from the responses to this thread it seems it's useless...

 

The fact that is was established years ago as a standard, does not mean *everyone uses it* in fact Microsoft are trying to move away from netBIOS and WINS, as they are really left overs from the old days and focus on TCP/IP and DNS (for name resolution).

 

"Trying" doesn't mean "succeeding", don't know why everyone misses so much stuff in tech forums but in my quotes it shows this article was 2007. If you know for a fact about can you say so? Otherwise this article still disagrees, if it is a "standard" of ethernet everyone uses it, if no one uses it then how is it a "standard," if I disable this might there be a network somewhere that I will not be able to connect to because it is disabled? Or, what the other person said will it make my loading times faster if I disable it? (Even though I am already using OpenDNS name server)

Before I saw that article I was going to disable it if it is supposedly not used, but "not used" and "standard" are opposites.

 

Ok let me explain.. NetBIOS is *old* it was developed in 1983, it is *insecure* because people can innumerate your local network by typing nbtstat or net view at the command prompt and get a ton of info that is useful to hackers. Old (legacy) operating systems needed it, i am talking Win95, 98, ME and NT4. Since windows 2000 (launched in 2000) came to pass, NetBIOS is no longer needed. It is only needed if you are trying to communicate with and old computer, ie a legacy operating system. Also the naming convention of NetBIOS is seriously limited with a flat namespace of 15 characters. Now, with the Internet and billions of computers or even a large company with a few hundred, you can see that choosing a unique name is going to be hard to manage.

So, Microsoft have been trying to move away from NetBIOS for the last 8 years.

Ironically, thats been complicated by the fact that many companies still have old NT4 servers and when you try and set up trusts between these older domain controllers and the newer, Windows 2000, Server 2003 and later domain controllers, you can't unless NetBIOS is used.

Let me ask you this.. in your home do you have any computers or servers that are running anything older than Windows 2000? If the answer is no, then you can safely remove NetBIOS.

And if developers follow the trend to only use WinSock (Windows sockets) instead of NetBIOS, all applications would work.

Oh and IPv6 will not support NetBIOS so it's future is short.

source..(March 2007) http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2007-March/052210.html

Pete

 

Some webapplications need it. It depends on how the programmer did the job.

O rats, I answered a post from last year. Sorry for that.

One more clue: if you use \\<servername> you are in fact using netbios.

BTW, MS created a new protocol in server 2008 that acts more or less the same as netbios. It is specially designed for small network. The name for this protocol fails me at the moment.