I have not had time to dig any more deeply into what made smb:// work on my home network. Just for clarifaction, my home network is very simple and is setup on a single subnet, 192.168.1.x. smb:// protocol now works when executed on the fileserver or any of the clients that I have whether they are linux, windows xp, or the app on my smartphone.
The issue is with the fileserver was somehow tied into its name. The hostname (/etc/HOSTNAME) of the fileserver was originally set to something like myhostname.mydomain.com. However, smb:// seemed to want the short name, myhostname. I changed hostname to be myhostname and voila, it works. I am being more rigorous now about separating short and fully qualified domain names in /etc/hosts and adding a search field in /etc/resolv.conf.
What no one has explained to me yet is this. Why does the samba server behave differently when interacting with smb:// than with mount.cifs. This is also true for windows xp with behavior like smb://.
In any event, I hope this trudge helps others who were facing the same problem. I would be happy to post /var/log/samba/log.smbd and its nmbd counterpart for mount.cifs and smb:// cases should any one ask for them.
cmrntnnr