Updated: January 15, 1997
- Integrity and concurrency. CIFS allows multiple clients
to access and update the same file, while preventing conflicts with
sophisticated file-sharing and locking semantics. These mechanisms
also permit aggressive caching and read-ahead/write-behind without
loss of integrity.
- Fault tolerance. CIFS supports fault tolerance in the
face of network and server failures. CIFS clients can automatically
restore connections and reopen files that were open prior to
interruption.
- Optimization for slow links. The CIFS protocol has been
tuned to run well over slow-speed dial-up lines. The effect is
improved performance for the vast numbers of users today who access
the Internet using a modem.
- Security. CIFS servers support both anonymous transfers
and secure, authenticated access to named files. File and directory
security policies are easy to administer.
- Performance and scalability. The performance of CIFS
servers is unequaled among network file systems. CIFS servers are
highly integrated with the operating system, tuned for maximum
system performance, and easy to administer.
- Unicode™ file names. File names can be in any human
character set, not just ones designed mainly for English or Western
European languages.
- Global file names. Users do not have to mount remote
file systems, but can refer to them directly with globally
significant names, instead of ones that have only local
significance.
Back to the CIFS home page
Back to top