afp vs cifs

Question

afp vs cifs

If I'm going to connect to another computer or server, is it better to use afp or cifs as the protocol? Is one of them better/faster for file sharing or is it all a wash.

I've got one computer using 10.3 that can connect to my NAS box using either afp or cifs. My PB running 10.4.2 will only connect to the NAS using afp (I get a bizarre error when trying to connect using cifs - complaint about the alias needing fixing).

In any case, if afp is the better option, I'll just go about my merry way. If cifs is better, I need to figure out why my powerbook running tiger is getting this error whenever I try to connect the drive (either by clicking on the drive in the finder or using the connect to menu command).

Posted on Oct 17, 2005 9:27 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 18, 2005 6:08 AM in response to Elizabeth Vetter

Hey Elizabeth....
it's a wash.
"CIFS" is a fancy windows name for smb, which is what you'll see more references to around here. SMB>Samba>CIFS. All "sort of" the same thing.

You can try conecting using SMB://[servername]/Folder
instead of CIFS://[whatever]
or try AFP://[whatever]

AFP will likely only work if your NAS supports the AppleFileProtocol (sounds like it does), and you're just as likely to be able to use SMB.
As for "better/faster"...not sure you'll be able to tell any difference.

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