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eid0rb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 4, 2013
2
0
Hi Guys,

It is absolutely mission critical that we have the utmost performance available when it comes to copying over the network, as we regularly deal with huge AV files. Previously, we've been copying over AFP and speeds have been great (over a gigabit network, usually getting ~110MB/s).

We've been doing some testing on Mavericks and have experienced some unfortunate results.

SMB2 is faster than SMB, however, it still isn't faster than the AFP protocol we are used to on ML.

Because of this, we decided to test out the AFP protocol in Mavericks. Bummer. It's slower than AFP in ML. How on earth did this happen? Have apple just nerfed their own protocol?

So anyway, I'm curious to know what experience you guys have had with this and if there's any solutions available.

If you'd like me to post my findings, let me know and I'll get them up.

Cheers,
eid0rb
 

SlCKB0Y

macrumors 68040
Feb 25, 2012
3,426
555
Sydney, Australia
It would be helpful if you told us what speeds you were getting using AFP on Mavericks.

What OS is the destination machine running in your AFP tests?
 

eid0rb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 4, 2013
2
0
Okay, I'll post some more info.

The source (copying from) is a ReadyDATA 5200 which is essentially just a larger/commercial ReadyNAS with some more features. It's running it's own ReadyDATA OS which I'm guessing is linux at it's core.

The two destinations we've been testing with are identical MacBook Pro's, one merely running ML and the other Mavericks. The specs are 2.7GHz i7 with 8GB RAM and 7200RPM HDD's.

Now for some results:
(The test file is 12.7GB, and was used in all tests. Also note that these times were taken using a manual stopwatch on a smartphone, so could be/are off by a second or so.)

Mavericks

AFP: 2:52 @ ~60MB/s
SMB2: 2:53 ~60MB/s

Mountain Lion

AFP: 1:54 (a significant difference.. one whole minute) @ ~100MB/s
SMB: 3:09 @ ~30MB/s

These times are consistent over 10+ tests.
As you can see, SMB2 does in fact improve performance over SMB, however AFP decreases.
Also note that the speeds are an approximation based on my monitoring via the performance monitor and are in no way accurate.



EDIT:

Also to add on to this, taking in to account that this was copying from a third party vendor, we decided to test with the same file, however copying between the two MacBooks themselves. The results were nearly identical.

Also probably worth noting, these tests were all performed on a separate network with only the source and destination being connected to a 1Gb/s switch.

More testing is to be conducted over the next couple days, so I'll get an accurate reading on those speeds.
 
Last edited:

obeliq

macrumors member
Oct 23, 2013
39
15
After upgrading to Mavericks, my access to a DNS-325 NAS has slowed dramatically. I'm talking watching the icons in a finder directory list start off as hollow boxes and slowly fill in row by row. When copying files the speed has dropped around 35%.

Definitely something has changed. Playing a video from the NAS with MPlayerX (which only caches 50MB) it takes about 5-6 seconds before the video starts. It used to be almost instantaneous. I even get stuttering when seeking through non-HD avi and mkv files. Not what I was used to in ML.

I have searched and hoped I could find what I might be doing wrong, but I have not changed any settings from what was working previously.
 

SlCKB0Y

macrumors 68040
Feb 25, 2012
3,426
555
Sydney, Australia
The two destinations we've been testing with are identical MacBook Pro's, one merely running ML and the other Mavericks.

I'd be curious if anyone could post Mavericks to Mavericks AFP speeds to see if the same thing is occurring or if its just between versions.
 

shu-gu-shot

macrumors newbie
Mar 21, 2012
12
0
I lost my long message, I summarize.

AFP client in Mavericks is fast, I get either the maximum speed my NAS can (small files) or I saturate the GbE (115 MB/s). The client is iMac mid-2007, Mavericks.
My NAS is home built and uses netatalk 3.0.5, most commercial NASes (Synology, QNAP) use netatalk 2.x that is slower and uses an older protocol.

I tested also SMB (v1, aka CIFS) offered by the kernel of my NAS (netatalk is in user space) and I get 60-70 MB/s on single transfers, but I saturate the GbE if I launch at least 4 concurrent transfers. I also get very high CPU usage on the iMac (a whole core, basically). In ML it used even more CPU.

As consequence, the AFP client in Mavericks is fine and the issue has to be in the AFP server module.
 

dyn

macrumors 68030
Aug 8, 2009
2,708
388
.nl
What disks are you using in the Macs? Speeds I've seen on my gigabit network between Macs using an ssd have been the same since Lion (don't recall testing it with 10.6 though): 100~110MB/s which is the max of the network (aka what it is supposed to do). I've never really used AFP because that only gave me problems (it is quite unreliable but when it worked speed was ok). Instead I've used SMB and now SMB2.
 

negativzero

macrumors 6502a
Jul 19, 2011
564
55
First thing you want to do is disable jumbo frames on your entire network, from your switches, router, NAS, and Mac. Use the default MTU settings. Incompatible MTU settings will kill performance. And Mavericks is kinda sensitive to this.

Next thing you want to do is enable LACP on your switch and NAS and I am assuming here your NAS and switch supports LACP.

Also it helps if you're transferring to an SSD too.
 

Draeconis

macrumors 6502a
May 6, 2008
985
279
I'm confused, why are people surprised performance is down in a 10.x.0 release?

If you're working with Macs in business, the rule of thumb is wait till 10.x.2, test and deploy. .0 releases are historically pretty buggy, .1 solves serious core issues, .2 is a larger release that usually solves most if not all issues in the transition to the new OS.

10.6 was a complete rewrite, and broke almost every application.
10.8 had hardware issues, mainly with wifi
Lets not even mention 10.7 - 10.7.5.
 

osplo

macrumors 6502
Nov 1, 2008
341
182
eid0rb, did you fix the problem? was it Mavericks or anything else?

I assume that others are getting fine results with Mavericks.

Still considering upgrading in my Plex setup (Mavericks runs fine in my MacBook Air and office iMac) since AFP/SMB speed is mission critical here.

Thanks!
 
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