One of the things I found was that copying a large amount of data
from the server volume to the Mac was significantly faster using
SMB than using AFP. For a 500MB folder with 5 big files, AFP was
getting around 36 Mbps, whereas SMB was getting around 50 Mbps.
--- I found just the opposite. I just did a quick unscientific
experiment. On my desktop mac (10.4.11 late G5 tower, gigabit
ethernet) I mounted the same server volume twice. The AFP mount
was specified as "afp://servername" and the SMB mount as "SMB://
servername". Then I did a finder drag of a 1GB file to each server
volume. The server is the same , just different protocols (dual G4
Xserve, 10.4.11 on gigabit ether with an Xraid for the share).
The transfer times for AFP were just slightly, though consistently,
faster. 21 seconds for AFP and 25 seconds for SMB , for a 1GB audio
file.
And trying it for multiple small files will give you yet different
results. As will multiple large files. As will mixed files. And so on...
2. Are there any disadvantages in Macs using SMB rather than AFP
to access the server?
For general usage, no. The SMB client is supposed to provide
indistinguishable functionality to the AFP client. Off the top of
my head, I can't think of a case where you would run into problems.
--- I would beg to differ here. As above, I open up two finder
windows (an AFP mount, and an SMB mount of the same server). The
collection of files I examine are on a group-use server, and they
are created by a mixed bag of Windows XP and various OSX clients.
When looking via the SMB mount I see a significant number of Word
documents with incorrect icons, but which appear fine on the AFP
mount. Most of the photoshop files that have nice thumbnail
previews as their icon on AFP have only generic icons on the SMB
mount.
To end users, these icon and document-type issues make a difference.
--
__________________________________
Gary W. Zuker
Senior Systems Analyst
Department of Psychology
University of Texas at Austin
__________________________________
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-dhan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Shoop
Computer Scientist
iWiring / U.S. Technical Services
