Today I found some interesting reading material on networking and SMB, thanks to my attempt to enable SMB3 support on my Synology NAS. There is a really interesting post I stumbled upon – Confessions Of A 10 GbE Network Newbie – Part 4: SMB3, and it contains nice example of that sort of story telling / way of explaining things which I really value so that I even quote it here:
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“Microsoft’s SMB3 multichannel is perhaps the most significant feature added to the SMB protocol in over 25 years. In simple terms, an older SMB2 connection in Windows 7 can be compared to a single lane highway and data traveling on this highway loaded into a 1995 half ton pick-up truck. A video file uploaded over 10GbE to a server is limited by this single lane highway and the older truck.
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SAMBA’s SMB3 gives us the 2013 turbo-charged truck that can travel faster, carry a larger load and use less fuel doing it. Microsoft’s SMB3 multichannel takes this up a notch by adding multiple lanes, so now we can have more of our turbo charged trucks (threads) on the highway simultaneously. Our video file upload carried by these trucks moves much quicker as a result.”
One would say that that type of explanation is something on the verge of oversimplification and imprecision but to my mind there is a dire need for simple explanations in any complex subject and sometimes that sort of explanations can be tricky to come up with.
P.S. For those who keen on all sort of factoids and details: trucks you see on the pictures from left to right are Chevrolet S-10 and GMC Sierra aka Chevrolet Silverado 🙂