As far as I know, neither. Unless Novell servers also use the SMB file
transfer protocol (which I think they don't - AFAIK, they use NCP)

Note the differences between Samba and jCIFS:

jCIFS is a mainly CLIENT side implementation of the SMB protocol. Samba
is a mainly SERVER side implementation of the SMB protocol.

i.e. jCIFS provides an API that allows you (or your application) to
connect over the network to an SMB shared folder, and access resources
on it.

Samba on the other hand, allows you to share a folder on e.g. a Unix
server to SMB clients (Windows workstations, jCIFS apps, etc)

There are two ways you can approach this, I think.

If your fax server is dropping files in a Windows Shared Folder, and
your app running on e.g. a Unix server wants to retrieve those files,
wherever they are, I'd say you want to use jCIFS.

If your fax server can drop files onto a network share (which there is
no real reason why it shouldn't, I guess), you may want to use Samba on
your Unix server to provide that network share, and then simply access
the files in the underlying disk/directory using the standard Java File API

Personally, I'd probably lean towards using jCIFS, because it means that
there is less configuration required on your Windows host. Samba is not
always the most trivial application to get working.

Good luck.

Rogan

I suppose that depends on whether you are happier installing and configuring
standard network packages (which may well already be installed), or hacking out
Java code ;-)

I have no idea what Novell do these days -- I haven't touched Novell since the
days when they used their own proprietary network protocol.  I'd guess -- since
Novell haven't actually gone bankrupt -- that their kit already has all the
networking options built in to be able to talk to Windows boxes, and probably
Sun boxes too.

BTW, it has just occurred to me.  If all these boxes are on the same LAN, then
why can they not talk to each other already ?

   -- chris