[CS-FSLUG] Curious about Linux networks

[Tim Young]

(grin) To think of smb as being an advanced networking protocol... (heh 
heh heh.  I know what is coming. Chuckling in advance..)

Smb is the reverse engineered implementation of the Windows Netbios 
protocol.  The creators of smb have always complained about what 
Microsoft has done with it, some of the poor security options, and a few 
other major complaints.  :)

But then again, unix users have always complained about the Windows ACLs 
(Access Control Lists) for security.  You should, after all, only need 
permissions that look like: rwxrwxrwx.  But ACLs are now being 
implemented for unix, and smb is one of the primary file-sharing 
protocols...  Just another result of the Microsoft monopoly project...

There are a few other file-sharing options, though not too many that are 
automatically distributed across multiple platforms.  Windows is one of 
the main platforms that has few options available to it.  Windows does 
not have many options except smb (I believe windows does still come 
bundled with IPX.  It had been bundled with win98 and 95, I believe it 
is still bundled with XP, but may be harder to find on the CD.)

Other options for sharing files that come in non-windows distros are: 
nfs, ftp and scp.  (scp is part of ssh)

After that, you will need to start adding them even to a *nix box.

There are a ton of other file-sharing protocols, but few of them come 
standard with everything.  Novell's IPX can be added to a Linux box, it 
does not come with a number of distros.  IPx can be fairly inefficient 
over a large-scale network, but is relatively efficient on a small-scale 
one.  Many computer games used it at one time to do gaming over.  But, 
IPX does not scale well to the Internet, and so was dropped.

For office use, go with SMB unless you have a novell server, then go 
with IPX.  For home networking, there are a lot of options to play 
with.  In the long run, most people end up using smb, just because it is 
integrated with windows.  (You get the network neighborhood, etc.)

*SMB*
Samba does have some very interesting security issues, primarily due to 
it's original design.  The whole authentication / password sharing 
mechanism has a number of issues.  Win9x sent plaintext passwords.  
WinNT sent "password equivelencies" (if you sniffed it, you could use it 
the same way you used a password to get in, even though it was not the 
password itself).  Win2000 and XP, WHEN YOU HAVE JOINED A DOMAIN, have 
machine passwords that change very regularly and automatically.  They 
also use encrypted passwords and a more complex encryption scheme, which 
provided "passable" security.

But, of course, compared to NFS which has fairly low security, you can 
lock things down fairly well.

SMB has a number of quirks.  Probably the most interesting thing about 
it is it's multiple levels of backwards compatibility.  With a decent 
network infrastructure, you can keep network traffic down.  But if you 
do not have that, you can get all sorts of broadcast traffic that causes 
all sorts of havoc with network switches.  SMB uses broadcast packets 
(that go to all computers, on the network, so they go to all ports on a 
switch) for finding the name of computers on the network and 
"browsemaster" election.  Both of these occur fairly regularly.

SMB is very well documented in the samba documentation (either on the 
samba.org webpage, or in the documentation directory that is part of the 
samba package.)

*IPX*
I still run into IPX semi-regularly as I work with mission 
organizations.  This is not due to the fact that IPX is a good protocol, 
but rather because the old Novell servers are still functioning very 
well after 10 years.  Some of the Novell releases have been such good 
work-horses, that people are slow to give them up.  Most people that I 
see ditching a Novell server do switch to Linux, just because they are 
used to a text interface, stability, and complexity.  That, and the fact 
that they do not have the funds to get into the Windows licensing 
structure.  :)

I actually know next to nothing about the IPX protocol itself, except 
that few people really know how to support it well.  :)

Blessings,

    - Tim Young

Nathan T. wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm not sure if I've just been using Windows too long, but it seems 
> the only relatively advanced networking protocol for home networks 
> that I know about is smb. I do know about NFS, but my only experience 
> with it portrayed it as a very simple networking system where you 
> count on all the computers on the network to have users who behave 
> themselves, and no advanced features like printer sharing are 
> implemented. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that's all it can 
> really do, that's simply the extent of my very limited experience with it.
>
> I would like to know more about the different networking options in 
> Linux, especially ones that are included with most distributions by 
> default. Third party protocols such as Novell netware interest me as 
> well, I would like to know though of one that is very well implemented 
> across Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, especially if it's easy to set up 
> and configure.
>
> Thanks.
>
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