CIFS Protocol Features
CIFS protocol has been widely updated by Microsoft after it acquired it, there are lots of features that were made available for CIFS by them.
- Supported Transportation Types – Although CISF was mainly created for Connection-oriented The Protocols like TCP, it can also work on the top of a connectionless environment.
- Connectivity – The CIFS Protocol is extremely flexible in terms of connectivity, there are no limitations to how many servers a single client can connect with. A single client can connect with as many servers as needed at the same time as per the requirement.
- Access to the Resources – The CIFS client can access multiple files simultaneously and work with them too. Also, there is no File Locking Mechanism available, which means that the same file can be used by multiple clients at the same time.
- Supports External Protocols – CIFS can also use some external Protocols if needed, which helps in increasing the functionality.
- Named Pipe Interprocess Communication – CIFS uses Convention the named pipes for the Interprocess Communication between the Client and Server.
- Supports Batched Commands – CIFS allows the grouping of messages to processed them in sequence.
- Supports DFS – CIFS also supports the Distributed File System which creates a Global Namespace which includes resources on multiple servers.
- RPC Support – CIFS Protocol supports the RPC protocols such as MS-RPCE and MS-RAP. As it was acquired by Microsoft it supports most RPC protocols that are developed by Microsoft.
- Multiple Filesets Naming Convention support – CIFS protocol supports to the UNICODE and ASCII character set.
What is CIFS (Common Internet File System)?
The Common Internet File System (CIFS), additionally called Server Message Block (SMB), is a community file-sharing protocol used for gaining access to documents, printers, and different assets on a community. Initially advanced using IBM in the Eighties and later refined by way of Microsoft, CIFS/SMB has become the de facto popular for sharing files and sources in heterogeneous network environments, inclusive of Windows, Unix, Linux, and macOS systems.