Dear Lazyweb: Network Storage options

[da]

Anybody happen to know the relative speeds of NFS, AppleTalk file-sharing, or Windows file-sharing (samba)? All are choices open to me for a file-server (to be used by mac clients, either wifi or ethernet). If all are equally efficient/speedy compared with 802.11b/g, that's fine too. :)

Google seems to mostly get me product pages for NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.

Comments

[oldgrover.livejournal.com]

Appletalk is, unless they've revamped it, slowest.

NFS is likely to be fastest (I've gotten faster saves over NFS then saving to local disk (though this was under some pretty specialized conditions, of course)), though Samba probably comes close.

Samba is probably easiest - NFS has some not so fun issues from time to time (both SMB and NFS are bletcherous, but Samba hides a lot more of the disgusting nature of the protocol then most NFS implementations do)

All file sharing protocols suck. Samba probably sucks the least out of the listed implementations for file sharing protocols.

-OG

[ckd]

Mmm, a bit of layer and terminology confusion here.

802.11b/g are link layer. Your link layer (Wi-Fi, or various speeds of wired Ethernet) is just the baseline over which you're running whatever protocol on top. Pick the fastest thing that works for you (802.11g for Wi-Fi, whatever Ethernet speed you feel like buying gear for for wired).

AppleTalk qua AppleTalk is a networking protocol, roughly at the same layer as TCP/IP. Very little uses it these days. Its primary advantage was ease of configuration back when BOOTP was a really kool nifty idea. We still run it at home only because of the ancient LaserWriter we have, which doesn't do LPR. AppleTalk over various physical and/or link layers was called LocalTalk, or PhoneNET, or EtherTalk.

AFP, or Apple Filing Protocol, is the equivalent to NFS or SMB/CIFS. It runs quite nicely over TCP/IP and has for many years. It shares with SMB/CIFS the advantage of being a per-mount authenticated protocol instead of a "hey, your IP looks okay, here you go" protocol like most NFS implementations.

I'd probably go with samba for compatibility/future-proofing.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

AFP, or Apple Filing Protocol, is the equivalent to NFS or SMB/CIFS. It runs quite nicely over TCP/IP and has for many years. It shares with SMB/CIFS the advantage of being a per-mount authenticated protocol instead of a "hey, your IP looks okay, here you go" protocol like most NFS implementations.

Heh. OK then, I meant AFP not AppleTalk. ;)

The page I saw that suggested I might want AFP did correctly refer to it as AFP, but a different page I looked at made me think it was also AppleTalk. Which turns out was wrong.

I wasn't confusing wifi with the higher-layer stuff; I was assuming that if I connected via wifi, the difference in speed versus wired would be far greater than the difference between the three choices of file-sharing protocol. Making any speed advantages of smb vs nfs, moot.

Thanks for the suggestions, anyhoo. Looks like smb it is.

[sfllaw.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend Samba. It's the best compromise if you have a GNU/Linux and Macintosh mixed-network.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I don't have a good comparison between NFS and Samba, but I used to use AppleTalk and then switched to Samba on our network at home and AppleTalk was FAR, FAR slower.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Looking through the comments, AFP is what I was referring to here. (I was following the cue of calling it AppleTalk.)