choice of file protocol (AFP vs CIFS vs NFS)

As a point of comparison to the prior post, here are the same tests performed using the same client, this time against my laptop as the server. This is mostly just for fun, and also to show that the network itself and the test client weren't at their limits when testing against the ReadyNAS. It's not relevant to directly compare the actual speeds observed between the ReadyNAS and the MacBook as the server -- the MacBook has a much faster CPU and much slower hard drive.

Note that the same relative performance between the remote filesystem protocols holds -- AFP has the fastest reads, CIFS gets penalized heavily for small reads and writes, and NFS comes out somewhere in between, beating AFP in a couple tests.


Testbed:

Client testbed: Mac Pro, OS X 10.4.9, 5GB RAM.
Server testbed: MacBook Pro, OS X 10.4.9, 2GB RAM.
Network: gigabit ethernet, linksys switch, normal Ethernet MTU (1500).


Test methodology:

Same as above.


Test results:

Large writes: 1GB, written 1MB at a time.
(dd bs=1048576 count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=/t/afp/testfile)

AFP: 38.6 sec (27.8 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 148.7 sec (7.2 MB/sec)
CIFS: 44.0 sec (24.4 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 157.7 sec (6.8 MB/sec)
NFS: 44.5 sec (24.1 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 137.5 sec (7.8 MB/sec)


Small writes: 10MB, written 1KB at a time.
(dd bs=1024 count=10000 if=/dev/zero of=/t/afp/testfile)

AFP: 0.15 sec (65.8 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 1.1 sec (9.6 MB/sec)
CIFS: 4.21 sec (2.4 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 7.5 sec (1.4 MB/sec)
NFS: 0.44 sec (23.1 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 1.2 sec (8.4 MB/sec)

That's pretty much too fast to measure, so let's try it with count=100000 (10x the size):

AFP: 3.3 sec (31.5 MB/sec)
CIFS: 42.3 sec (2.4 MB/sec)
NFS: 5.0 sec (20.6 MB/sec)

The conclusion holds -- small transactions are heavily penalized under CIFS (at least with Apple's implementation).

Small reads: 100MB, read 1KB at a time.
(dd bs=1024 count=100000 of=/dev/null if=/t/afp/testfile)

AFP: 3.4 sec (30.1 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 7.5 sec (13.7 MB/sec)
CIFS: 39.6 sec (2.6 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 64.0 sec (1.6 MB/sec)
NFS: 3.8 sec (26.9 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 7.3 sec (14.0 MB/sec)


Large reads: 1GB, read 1MB at a time.
(dd bs=1048576 count=1024 of=/dev/null if=/t/afp/testfile)

AFP: 34 sec (30.1 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 76.7 sec (14.0 MB/sec).
CIFS: 38.8 sec (27.7 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 78.6 sec (13.6 MB/sec).
NFS: 26.1 sec (41.1 MB/sec) - ReadyNAS was 89.3 sec (12.0 MB/sec).