IT Support | Managed IT Services
What is Server Message Block Protocol?
The SMB protocol (Server Message Block protocol) is a client-server communication protocol for sharing access to files, printers, serial ports, and other network resources. It can also carry interprocess communication transaction protocols. SMB has mostly been used to link Windows machines over the years, while most other operating systems, such as Linux and macOS, provide client components for connecting to SMB resources.
In the 1980s, an IBM team created the SMB protocol. Since then, the protocol has generated a slew of versions, sometimes known as dialects, to match changing network requirements. During that time, SMB has been widely adopted and remains one of the most common file-sharing methods in the office.
Microsoft to disable SMB1 on Windows 11
Microsoft recently revealed that the SMB1 file-sharing protocol on Windows PCs will be deprecated in the near future. On the latest Windows 11 Home Insider releases from the Dev Channel, Microsoft has disabled the protocol by default.
IT administrators will be able to manually reinstall the protocol if it is no longer enabled by default on Windows 11 Home. In-place upgrades on PCs that already use the protocol will not be affected by the Windows 11 Home change.
Microsoft decided years ago to remove SMB1 from Windows 10 and Windows Server by default. SMB1 is a decades-old protocol that is still used to link PCs to obsolete NAS systems, but Microsoft has announced that it will be phased out.
“There is no edition of Windows 11 Insider that has any part of SMB1 enabled by default anymore. At the next major release of Windows 11, that will be the default behaviour as well. Ultimately, Microsoft plans to go even further and remove SMB1 binaries on its operating systems. Windows and Windows Server will no longer include the drivers and DLLs of SMB1. We will provide an out-of-band unsupported install package for organizations or users that still need SMB1 to connect to old factory machinery, medical gear, consumer NAS, etc.,”
Ned Pyle – Principal Program Manager in the Windows Server Engineering Group
