The Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is widely used in enterprise environments for file sharing. However, SMB is known for being extremely sensitive to network latency and fragmentation, making it a challenging protocol to optimize over wide-area networks (WANs), especially when IPSec tunnels, cloud security platforms like Cloudflare ZTNA, and next-generation firewalls such as FortiGate are involved. This document outlines best practices and field-proven techniques to opti