Samba uses the SMB (server message block) protocol that is based on the NetBIOS services. Microsoft released the protocol so other software manufacturers could establish connections to a Microsoft domain network. With Samba, the SMB protocol works on top of the TCP/IP protocol, so the TCP/IP protocol must be installed on all clients.

CIFS (common Internet file system) protocol is another protocol supported by Samba. CIFS defines a standard remote file system access protocol for use over the network, enabling groups of users to work together and share documents across the network.

NetBIOS is a software interface (API) designed for communication between machines providing a name service. It enables machines connected to the network to reserve names for themselves. After reservation, these machines can be addressed by name. There is no central process that checks names. Any machine on the network can reserve as many names as it wants as long as the names are not already in use. The NetBIOS interface can be implemented for different network architectures. An implementation that works relatively closely with network hardware is called NetBEUI, but this is often referred to as NetBIOS. Network protocols implemented with NetBIOS are IPX from Novell (NetBIOS via TCP/IP) and TCP/IP.

The NetBIOS names sent via TCP/IP have nothing in common with the names used in /etc/hosts or those defined by DNS. NetBIOS uses its own, completely independent naming convention. However, it is recommended to use names that correspond to DNS hostnames to make administration easier or use DNS natively. This is the default used by Samba.

Samba server provides SMB/CIFS services and NetBIOS over IP naming services to clients. For Linux, there are three daemons for Samba server: smnd for SMB/CIFS services, nmbd for naming services, and winbind for authentication.

The Samba client is a system that uses Samba services from a Samba server over the SMB protocol. All common operating systems, such as Mac OS X, Windows, and OS/2, support the SMB protocol. The TCP/IP protocol must be installed on all computers. Samba provides a client for the different UNIX flavors. For Linux, there is a kernel module for SMB that allows the integration of SMB resources on the Linux system level. You do not need to run any daemon for the Samba client.

SMB servers provide resources to the clients by means of shares. Shares are printers and directories with their subdirectories on the server. It is exported by means of a name and can be accessed by its name. The share name can be set to any name—it does not have to be the name of the export directory. A printer is also assigned a name. Clients can access the printer by its name.

A domain controller (DC) is a server that handles accounts in domain. For data replication, additional domain controllers are available in one domain.