Understanding Windows Server 2008 DFS-N by analyzing network traces

Jose Barreto has a new blog post covering details of the behavior of Windows Server 2008 DFS-N (Distributed File System - Namespaces) clients by looking at network traces.  His main goal is to show the interaction between a DFS-N client, a domain controller, a namespace server and a file server. These traces were taken using Network Monitor 3.3 beta from a set of four isolated computers in a domain.

This detailed post (including tables, comments and screenshots) covers four distinct traces:

• To warm up, a simple trace: pinging a server by DNS name
• Next, a more interesting trace: querying a file server directly
• Then, a trace using DFS-N: querying only the DFS namespace
• Finally, a complete trace involving all four computers: querying a file server via a DFS namespace

Check it out at http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2009/04/15/understanding-windows-server-2008-dfs-n-by-analyzing-network-traces.aspx