2.2.1 Member Protocol Roles

This section describes all member protocol roles.

The Remote Administration (RAP) Protocol (as described in [MS-RAP]) is an administrative protocol whose function has largely been replaced by newer protocols. In the File Access Services System, RAP is used by legacy systems as a discovery protocol. RAP also supports certain client and server administration methods, such as SMB file share enumeration, but this functionality has been superseded by the Workstation Service Remote Protocol (as described in [MS-WKST] and Server Service Remote Protocol (as described in [MS-SRVS]). RAP is not used in IPv6, and can only be used in IPv4 if NetBIOS is enabled.

The Distributed File System (DFS) Namespace Referral Protocol [MS-DFSC] allows SMB file clients to map paths in a virtual distributed namespace to paths on specific file servers.

The Common Internet File System (CIFS) Protocol [MS-CIFS], Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol [MS-SMB], and Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0 Protocol [MS-SMB2] are network file access protocols that support file sharing (remote access to an object store) between computers.

Server Message Block (SMB) version 2 Protocol [MS-SMB2] defines a new version of the SMB protocol. First implemented in Windows Server 2008 operating system and Windows Vista operating system, it is the default file sharing protocol used by Windows. It defines  features, such as advanced pipelining, symbolic links, a new form of oplocks called leasing, support for hosted caching, durable and resilient handles, and improved scalability of basic structures like numbers of shares, users, and open files.

In Windows Server 2012 operating system, Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system, and Windows Server 2016 operating system, the Server Message Block (SMB) 2 Protocol has additional transport support for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), as defined in [RFC5040] section 2.1. The SMB Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) Transport Protocol (SMB Direct) ([MS-SMBD]) enables direct memory-to-memory data transfers between cooperating SMB3 dialect clients and servers.

Network File System (NFS) version 2 and 3 is a protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, defined in [RFC1094] (version 2) and [RFC1813] (version 3) that allows a computer to access files over a network. A client  implementation of the NFS V2 and NFS V3 protocols shipped in Windows Vista and later and Windows Server 2003 operating system and later. The server implementation of NFS V2 and V3 protocol shipped in Windows Server 2003 and later. Windows Server 2012 and later implement the server role of Network File System (NFS) Version 4 Minor Version 1 as specified in [RFC5661].

Network Lock Manager (NLM) and Network Status Monitor (NSM) protocols [C702] are used in conjunction with the NFS version 2 and NFS version 3 protocols to provide support for file locking and service status monitoring.

The File System Control Codes specification [MS-FSCC] defines the network format of Windows data structures that are embedded in the SMB access protocols.

The Microsoft Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol extensions ([MS-WDV], [MS-WDVME], and [MS-WDVSE]) define a set of extensions for both the WebDAV client and server. These extensions enhance their ability to function as a remote file system that accesses objects defined by uniform resource locators (URLs).