AFP, SMB, NFS which is the best data transfer protocol?

AFP, SMB, NFS which is the best data transfer protocol? I have a computer with large hard disks running Gentoo. I have to serve med/big files via a wired network to Apple devices (all of them running OS X).
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 178

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

"You should find this article interesting:
iSCSI, AFP, SMB, and NFS performance with Mac OS X 10.5.5 clients.

It shows these test results:

(in seconds)

iSCSI 134.267530 AFP
140.285572 SMB 159.061026 NFSv3 (w/o tuning) 477.432503
NFSv3 (w/tuning) 293.994605"

Guest [Entry]

"Although they are data transfer protocol, I would like to remind you they don't accept the same characters as file name. For example, \ / : * ? ” < > | are not allowed in Windows NTFS and Samba.

It happens to Apple Talk protocol from my experience on MacOS 8.6 and Windows 95 running AppleTalk compatible service. Some characters in file names are allowed in MacOS are invalid to Windows.

Detail about my experience copying files from Linux Desktop to QNAP TS-212P running Samba and NFS can be found in Performance Comparison on Backup Linux Files to QNAP TS-212P. The test result in MB/s to what interests you are:

Samba mount by command in terminal: Read 63, write 43
NFS mount by command in terminal: Read 71.8, write 31.8

I have done a test with FTP, Samba, iSCSI, and NFS in File Transmission with Different Sharing Solution on NAS with QNAP TS-112. The test result in MB/s to what interests you are:

Samba mount by Nautilus: Read 24.4, write 18.6
Samba mount by command in terminal: Read 56.4, write 36.3
NFS mount by command in terminal: Read 42.5, write 20.6

Therefore, Samba is faster than NFS from my experience. But some of my files contains illegal characters in NTFS and Samba, I choose to use NFS as my primary protocol.

Wish it helps!"