Blue Name provides the NetBIOS support required for certain
features of LAN Manager. Although the CIFS transport does
not require NetBIOS, NetBIOS is required for the browse
service as well as name resolution for CIFS clients on the
network. Blue Peach's view of user expectation is that a
network client will be able to browse the 'Windows
Workgroup' on a PC and see all Blue Share servers on the
network and that a Blue Share client will be able to
present an interface to a user where a Windows Server can
be seen and browsed. This functionality requires NetBIOS.
The Blue Name NetBIOS Service provides three levels of
functionality: Name Service, Datagram Service and Session
Service. The Name Service provides name registration and
lookup. This can be done in one of four modes: Broadcast
(B-Mode), Peer (P-Mode), Mixed (M-Mode), or Hybrid
(H-Mode). Broadcast supports Name Registration on LANs
through broadcast packets. Peer supports routable name
registration using WINS servers, Mixed and Hybrid combine
both broadcast and peer modes bot with different precedence
for each mode.
The NetBIOS Session service is one of two methods that CIFS
can use to establish sessions between a client and server.
Some CIFS services require the NetBIOS Session Service
although basic file service can use direct TCP connections.
Blue Share will always initiate sessions with direct TCP
connections but will automatically fall back to NetBIOS
connections if unsuccessful.
The NetBIOS Datagram service provides CIFS Datagram traffic
over NetBIOS. LAN Manager Mailslots are implemented using
NetBIOS datagrams and are required for network browsing and
discovery.
