Networking protocols for home LAN

[elzmaddy]

What protocol do you typically use for file/sharing in a small home LAN environment of a few Windows systems? NetBEUI is typically recommended, but do you see any advantages or disadvantages in using TCP/IP instead? I remember it was highly discouraged, (I used to read those long articles at grc.com), but I suppose behind a hardware router, in a 2k/xp environment the security issue would be much lesser wouldn't it?

Also, a side question.. can Linux be configured to use NETBEUI with its samba services? I remember I spent so much time trying to figure out why i couldn't mount a Windows share -- I didn't have TCP/IP bound to file and print sharing.

 

[cmetz]

NetBEUI is dead. Good riddance. Use IP. NetBIOS over IP is still brain damaged, but at least uses a standard network layer protocol and a standard routing infrastructure (I don't know of NetBEUI ever supporting routed operation, you'd have to do a L2 bridge to do it over a WAN... ick).

Linux doesn't support NetBEUI for Samba. Use IP.