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What is the difference between CIFS and SMB?

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Question added by Umar Sa'ad , Assistant Network & Security Manager , Dangote Petroleum & Petrochemicals FZE
Date Posted: 2016/09/24
Subhash kumar gurbaxani
by Subhash kumar gurbaxani , maintenance enggineer , TMD INTERNATINAL

Most people, when they use either SMB or CIFS, are talking about the same exact thing.  The two are interchangeable not only in discussion, but also in application – i.e., a client speaking CIFS can talk to a server speaking SMB and vice versa.  Why?  Because CIFS is a form of SMB

sudhakar subburam
by sudhakar subburam , Technical service Specialist , IBM

SMB stands for “Server Message Block.”  It’s a file sharing protocol that was invented by IBM and has been around since the mid-eighties.  It was designed to allow computers to read and write files to a remote host over a local area network (LAN).  The directories on the remote hosts made available via SMB are called “shares.”

CIFS stands for “Common Internet File System.” CIFS is a dialect of SMB.  That is, CIFS is a particular implementation of the Server Message Block protocol, created by Microsoft.

 

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