# &Windows; Shares

### Introduction

In many small local area networks, the &SMB; protocol is used to offer network services. Names like &Windows; Network or &Windows; for Workgroups Network or LanManager are often used as well. Using &SMB; you can access so-called shares (&ie; folders made available by the server) as well as printers.

&kde; comes with built-in support for the &SMB; protocol. As &kde; is network-transparent that means you can access &SMB; shares from everywhere you can access your local files, for example in the &konqueror; file manager and in the file dialog. To make use of this you should provide &kde; with some information on your &SMB; network. But don't worry, this is normally pretty simple as, for example, all the &Windows; clients in your network need and have the same information.

For the &SMB; protocol to work, it is required to have &Samba; correctly installed.

### Use

Although there are a lot of insecure &SMB; networks out there which allow access to anyone, in principle you have to authenticate yourself to access the services of an &SMB; server. By default, &kde; will use the data entered in the Default user name: and Default password: fields to authenticate itself on &SMB; hosts. If you leave the field Default user name: empty, &kde; will try to access &SMB; hosts without a username. If you leave the default password empty, it will try without a password. If &kde; is unsuccessful accessing the host using these settings, you will be asked for a username and a password.

While it makes things more comfortable if &kde; stores your &SMB; password, this may be a security problem. If you are using &SMB; in a security conscious environment, you should not store your password here but rather enter it anew every time you need to access an &SMB; host.