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 a real Windows machine as the client, against the same ReadyNAS.


Testbed:

Client testbed: homebuilt PC, Athlon XP processor, Windows XP, 1GB RAM.
Server testbed: ReadyNAS NV, 1GB RAM, 3.01c1-p6 firmware, AFP update, oplocks update.
ReadyNAS disk hardware: 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drives, 400GB each, configured as one X-RAID volume.
Network: gigabit ethernet, linksys switch, normal Ethernet MTU (1500).


Test methodology:

Same as above. Testing CIFS only since that's all Windows supports out of the box.


Test results:

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

CIFS: 97.6 sec (11.0 MB/sec) - OS X took 157.7 sec (6.8 MB/sec)


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

CIFS: 6.1 sec (1.7 MB/sec) - OS X took 7.5 sec (1.4 MB/sec)

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

CIFS: 5.2 sec (19.7 MB/sec) - OS X took 64.0 sec (1.6 MB/sec). If repeated, takes 0.3 sec -- obviously cached better than OSX<>ReadyNAS (which took the same amount of time if invoked over and over).


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

CIFS: 55.6 sec (19.3 MB/sec) - OS X took 78.6 sec (13.6 MB/sec).


Conclusion:

Windows is much better at CIFS against a ReadyNAS NV than Mac OS X is.