Comments on: AFP: Get to your files from anywhere. Fast.

By: michael withers

michael withers — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 04:40:34 +0000

im sorry to bug. Im a boot camp mac user… umm, i have been using DNS ip progs to share my vnc software with my phone and other computer via a separate network…
Im very new to all of this, but i forwarded my port from my D link to 2 different ip’s (my computers) and now i want to use this “anywhere” feature with AFP not with FTP (read it was not encrypted). What do u recommend for the best and basic file sharing from “any” internet source? EMAIL REPLY THANKYOU
PS: running all computers that i want to share through my WiFi at my house, not directly connected (hence the port forward… i think =).

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:23:25 +0000

My apologies, I somehow glossed over your diagram. That is exactly what I was looking for!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:37:24 +0000

Kevin, I think you nailed it in your comment:

“I have a *windows* server…”

I have no doubt that on a Windows server, Samba is faster (since that is the native protocol for file-sharing in Windows). You’ll note that I am talking about OS X clients and a Linux server in my article — neither of which have native Samba support. And if you look at the little diagram I put in the article, you’ll see that yes, I do have numbers — and those are old numbers for 10.4.7, AFP has improved even more in 10.5.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:32:08 +0000

Do you have numbers to back this up? In my testing smb:// mounts blow away afp:// mounts in terms of speed. I have a windows server with 2TBs and run all Apple laptops otherwise. In my experience, file transfers are roughly a third faster when I mount the share via Samba.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:16:08 +0000

I would, but I do need direct access to those shares on my Windows XP virtual machine (via Parallels on my iMac) that I use for testing and BlackBerry software. FTP wouldn’t be as convenient. Plus if someone comes over with a Windows laptop I don’t want them to have to jump through hoops to get on the server.

By: Gav

Gav — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:12:25 +0000

Sounds pretty good, if I were you’d I would drop samba altogether, and just keep the FTP server active for those occasional times when you need access on Windows. In my opinion, windows supports FTP shares better than samba shares anyway lol!