CIFS Benefits

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.