Development Overview: NetBIOS Emulation Layer

SMB filesharing, which is at the core of CIFS, was originally designed to run over IBM/Sytec PC-LAN networks, via the NetBIOS API.

Rather than running SMB natively over other protocols, most vendors implemented a NetBIOS emulation layer. (DECnet, SNA, IPX/SPX, TCP/IP, etc.)

The best-known NetBIOS emulation is NetBIOS over TCP/IP (aka. NBT or NetBT) as specified in RFC 1001/1002. This specification provides for:

• Emulation of non-routed NetBIOS LANs across routed TCP/IP networks.
• NetBIOS name to IP address resolution.
• Uni- Multi- and Broadcast datagrams.
• Session and datagram services.

Our goal:

Provide a complete, modular NetBIOS emulation layer compatible with industry implementations. Includes: Client name service, datagrams, and NBT NetBIOS API.
Implement NetBIOS emulation as independant from SMB.

W2K provides native SMB over TCP/IP.

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