Chapter 14. Session Setup

...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Macbeth , Act V, Scene v, William Shakespeare

Originally, the SESSION SETUP was not required by or even defined as part of the SMB protocol. It was introduced in the LANMAN days in order to handle User Level authentication and could be skipped if the server was in Share Level security mode. These days, however, the SESSION SETUP takes care of a lot of unfinished business, like cleaning up some of the debris left by the NEGOTIATE PROTOCOL RESPONSE . In the NT LM 0.12 dialect there must be a SESSION SETUP exchange before a TREE CONNECT may be sent, even if the server is operating in Share Level security mode.