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I love the 2027 SMB scan to file! You plug in to Windows network with a shared folder. Press browse and you now can select the folder to scan to. No ScanRT needed. Better yet press file type and you can name the file at the machine to send it to the folder with the name. (beats time and date) And then you can save destination with the program destination button. COOL. I beat my savin competition because he said his machine would not do that. It would have if he would have read the scanner manual. Oh well. Check it out!
JG
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What is SMB?
SMB, which stands for Server Message Block, is a protocol for sharing files, printers, serial ports, and communications abstractions such as named pipes and mail slots between computers.

The earliest document I have on the SMB protocol is an IBM document from 1985. It is a copy of an IBM Personal Computer Seminar Proceedings from May 1985. It contains the IBM PC Network SMB Protocol. The next document I have access to is a Microsoft/Intel document called Microsoft Networks/OpenNET-FILE SHARING PROTOCOLfrom 1987. The protocol was subsequently developed further by Microsoft and others. Many of the documents that define the SMB protocol(s) are available at ftp.microsoft.com in the SMB documentation area.

SMB is a client server, request-response protocol. The diagram to the left illustrates the way in which SMB works. The only exception to the request-response nature of SMB (that is, where the client makes requests and the server sends back responses) is when the client has requested opportunistic locks (oplocks) and the server subsequently has to break an already granted oplock because another client has requested a file open with a mode that is incompatible with the granted oplock. In this case, the server sends an unsolicited message to the client signalling the oplock break.

Servers make file systems and other resources (printers, mailslots, named pipes, APIs) available to clients on the network. Client computers may have their own hard disks, but they also want access to the shared file systems and printers on the servers.

Clients connect to servers using TCP/IP (actually NetBIOS over TCP/IP as specified in RFC1001 and RFC1002), NetBEUI or IPX/SPX. Once they have established a connection, clients can then send commands (SMBs) to the server that allow them to access shares, open files, read and write files, and generally do all the sort of things that you want to do with a file system. However, in the case of SMB, these things are done over the network.

As mentioned, SMB can run over multiple protocols. The following diagram shows this:

SMB can be used over TCP/IP, NetBEUI and IPX/SPX. If TCP/IP or NetBEUI are in use, the NetBIOS API is being used.

SMB was also sent over the DECnet protocol. Digital (now Compaq) did this for their PATHWORKS product.

NetBIOS over TCP/IP seems to be referred to by many names. Microsoft refers to it as NBT in some places and NetBT in others (specifically in their Windows NT documentation and in the Windows NT registry). Others refer to it as RFCNB. NetBEUI is sometimes refered to as NBF (NetBIOS Frame Format?) by Microsoft.

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