Most Efficient Network File sharing protocol?

[lee]

Dan Mossor <dan.mossor at outlook.com> writes:

> When the DVD is built, I pull the updates across the local network to
> my machine and build the DVD there. These <4GiB transfers sometimes
> take close to 3 to 4 hours using NFS, and it is a Gigabit
> network.

Have you checked the bandwidth usage during these transfers?  That
transferring a file not even 4GB in size takes 3--4 hours makes me think
that the problem is not so much the protocol you´re using but something
else.

As to NFS, I have had bad experiences with it, like network cards
freezing up and computers being halted because NFS failed for unknown
reasons.  I never got it to work reliably and would not recommend using
NFS for anything.

Samba may be the easiest one to use, with scp and rsync as alternatives,
followed by FTP.

Efficiency is not necessarily measured solely in what kind of overhead a
protocol burdens the networking hardware with.  In the end, you want to
get the job done reliably within reasonable amounts of time and without
going to lengths.  A few seconds more or less on transfers of up to 4GB,
caused by differences in the design of the transfer protocols, are
probably irrelevant in your scenario.  As much as I like efficiency,
sacrificing "bare metal" efficiency for benefits like greater ease of
use and increased reliability can be quite worthwhile when it yields a
better overall efficiency.

While your transfers take hours to complete, what does it matter which
protocol you´re using?  With any of them, the transfers are likely to
take these unreasonable amounts of time until you fix the real problem.
Once it is fixed, you can still experiment with different protocols and
find out which one gives the best results.


-- 
Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)