Samba vs NFS

[Mark Mielke]

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 01:53:50PM -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > However, Samba seems to be able to handle it more gracefully than NFS.
> samba/SMB uses UDP whereas NFS uses TCP - hence the issues of speed vs.
> reliability. You could probably google the idea of using UDP instead of
> TCP on NFS connections but myself, I would opt for reliability.

This isn't the entire truth. Samba/SMB can use UDP or TCP, and NFS can use
UDP or TCP. The 'reliable' implementation of NFS is entirely UDP. Linux has
only added support for NFS over TCP recently, and I think it is still
marked 'experimental' in the compiler options for Linux...

The UDP vs TCP argument isn't black and white as speed vs reliability. Once
a connection is established, a UDP stream and a TCP stream, over a local
area network, should be able to obtain maximum bandwidth. TCP may have a
slow start, and UDP performs poorly when not using a local area network.

For any given scenario with regard to SMB vs NFS, and UDP vs TCP, you
really should time the difference, rather than theorize about it.

mark

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