I've noticed on my new laptop that SMB is now being transmitted directly over port 445 instead of using NetBIOS over TCP, which is good, I suppose, but now it seems chattier than ever. TDImon shows about ten packets being transmitted about once a second. This is way more data than needs to be transmitted, especially considering that I'm not using any SMB stuff at the moment. I have used it to mount a share and to print, but there's nothing going on right now. Even so, the network activity monitor in the systray is going nuts. Is there any way I can get Windows to shut the f*ck up?

As it turns out, the chattiness is due to a printer. It seems to be gathering status information every second. Is this really the way Windows printer shares work? The client constantly polls the server to see if anything interesting has happened? If so, no wonder print servers are dedicated in a Windows network. God forbid that the server just tell its clients when something happens. Or is it a function of my print drivers? The printer in question is an Epson Photo R300 using the most recent drivers both on the server and the client.

It's TCP communication specifically between the client and server. Ethereal claims that it's all one TCP session, but, for all I know, all SMB over TCP is gonna be like that.