Re: samba

[Remco Blaakmeer <remco@blaakmeer.student.utwente.nl>]

On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, George Bonser wrote:

> On 15-Dec-97 Eloy A. Paris wrote:
> > Aaron Walker <aaron@iconmedia.com> wrote:
> > 
> >: Are you saying that with I can use any protocol (IPX, TCP/IP, or NetBEUI)
> >: with
> >: Samba on the win95 box?

No, I was not saying that. Generally, when you want computers to be able
to talk to each other, they must speak the same language, that is, the
same protocol. So, if one computer 'talks' TCP/IP only, the other has to
do that as well or they won't be able to communtcate.

> > Samba (that runs on several Unix flavors, including of course Linux)
> > can _only_ use TCP/IP. Windows 95 can use TCP/IP, IPX/SPX or NetBEUI
> > to do Microsoft Networking. If you want a Windows 95 box to talk to a
> > Samba server, then it _must_ use TCP/IP because Samba only talks
> > TCP/IP.

Yes, this is what I meant.

> I do not think this is correct.  I have seen Linux machines running SaMBa in
> both ipx and tcp/ip networks.

But the Windows computers were always using at least TCP/IP, right? Here
at the campus we have a campus-wide students network with about 1000
computers connected to it. Students can run any protocol they like on it,
just as long as they don't put too high a load on the network (i.e. no
Lantsatic or old versions of DOOM, which run on broadcast only
protocols[1]). So, there have been and will be students that run IPX,
NetBEUI _and_ TCP/IP just to 'see more computers in the Network
Neighborhood'[2]. This has proven not to work well. Some times, when one
computer runs IPX and TCP/IP and an other one talks TCP/IP only, they
can't 'see' each other before the former removes IPX. The general advise
here is to 'bind' the 'Client for Microsoft Networking' to TCP/IP only (as
well as the 'Server...') and optionally install IPX for games.  Linux
users can use Samba, which uses TCP/IP only.

So, it doesn't really matter which protocol you use, as long as you use it
on all computers connected to your network.

Remco

[1] Broadcast only protocols can cause a severe load on other computers
that are connected to the network. You can virtually stop a 386 running
Windows with IPX if you just start a couple of DOOM games with the wrong
version of DOOM. This is because every computer at the network has to
examine all broadcast packets and this can take a lot of CPU time.

[2] This somtimes seems to work for them, as not all computers even have
TCP/IP installed. Most of the time these are WfW3.11 computers owned by a
student that doesn't know M$ made a TCP/IP stack for it.



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