Common Internet Spins System

Common Internet Spins System (CIFS), in the past ''' Server Message Block ''' (SMB) is a protocol network allowing mainly to divide files, but also of the Imprimante S, ports series and other types of communications which one can have different between Ordinateur S from a network. It is mainly used by the computers equipped with Microsoft Windows. In the continuation of the article, one will speak about SMB, more used than CIFS.

Of IBM at Microsoft

SMB in the beginning was created by IBM, but the most used version was deeply modified by Microsoft. In 1998, Microsoft re-elects SMB in CIFS (Common Internet Spins System) and adds several functions like the support of the short cuts and files of bigger size.

Customer-server architecture

SMB functions via a structure of Client/serveur, the customer will send specific requests and the file server will answer it. The protocol is optimized for a use in a lan, but it can also be used on Internet (the majority of the simple attacks under Windows have as a source this reason, benefitting in particular from the presence of the service " Serveur" launched by defect).

Various resource sharing

Waiter SMB makes it possible to give the access to the customers of the network to filesystems, but also to other resources like printers. The customer can have his own discs which will not be divided and can reach at the same time the discs and printers divided by the waiter.

The network layer used by CIFS: TCP/IP or NETBIOS

SMB in the beginning was conceived to turn over one of the implementations of NETBIOS (NetBUI or NBT), but it can also turn directly on TCP/IP since Windows 2000.

Charge with the network

The protocol makes an intensive use of the Band-width network, that is due to the nature of SMB; indeed, each customer defers his presence to all the network (via broadcasts); that is due to the presence of the service " Explorer of ordinateur" , launched by defect.

See too

Microsoft: administrative Division: IPC$, PRINT$, FAX$
Open source: Samba

External references

the page of Microsoft devoted to CIFS
jCIFS java CIFS, the software library of Samba

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