AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

mdgm wrote:
I do think that running such an old version of Netatalk is disgraceful and means they are a poor alternative for Mac users.

I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as 'disgraceful', but interesting all the same. I had never really thought that all the NAS vendors would use basically the same AFP code. It looks like many of the OS X NAS issues ReadyNAS has with AFP that show up in other fora too (e.g. poor transfer rates for shipping large numbers of small files) - suggesting that these may well be Netatalk issues rather than specific stuff to do with the NAS vendor.

One pundit suggests part of the Lion issue is due to Apple discontinuing support for an older AFP authentication strategy, in favour of a newer but more processor intensive alternative.

Rumor has it that some NAS vendors intentionally disable DHX2 in netatalk because it’s a lot more CPU intensive. This could lead to longer login times when accessing AFP shares on NAS’ units with slow CPUs.

We haven't done proper tests, but getting a connection to the NV+ with LionAFPd running does appear to take longer than without - but there may be many other factors in play. But maybe enabling support for Lion AFP on the NV+ series may make it run like a dog anyhow... which brings us back to looking for replacement NAS units with powerful processors (and so the Ultra Plus and DS1511+ etc.)

Would be interesting to know what solution Apple use for their Time Capsule box - presumably not Netatalk - and whether there are alternative solutions NAS vendors could use (e.g. not open source). NAS boxes are not cheap, so vendors coughing up for functional commercial software might be economic if such worked better.