Windows Small Business Server 2003, Part 7
SMB Signing Revisited (post SP1)
by Andy Goodman [SBS-MVP]

Once upon a time long long ago in SBS Land, we knew how to deal with network slowdowns due to SMB Signing.
We disabled it and the undisputed lead article on the subject was on the Magical M&M's Site. Since that time there has been quite a discussion about whether or not to do it. Jesper has done about the best job of explaining whether it makes sense for your needs in his blog, as anyone I have read.

So if you decided to do it and you followed the Magical M&M's article you may need to revisit the process. Along came SBS SP1, and even though their article is still valid, you may have noticed some of your users  are starting to complain about speed issues again. So what happened, you ask. Well here is my take on it and my solution. One of the things that happens during the SP1 install is the default domain policy gets reset. So all those tweaks you made to it got overwritten. So rather than just re-tweaking and waiting for Microsoft to wipe out our work again, this time let us create our own Group Policy Object instead of using the Default Domain Policy Object.

Shortly after posting this article, an ugly side effect became apparent. You could no longer see shares on the server and the server could not see it's own SYSVOL share. This is documented in KB 839499 & KB 842804 and I will repost this article once I work out the bugs.

Sorry for any inconvenience, the balance of the article has been pulled from public view for now.