SFS is not designed to be a “high-performance” file system, such as might be required for data-intensive storage demanded by parallel computing applications (big data).

• On-campus, throughput of ~20-40 MB/s on SFS can be achieved depending upon file quantities and sizes. Most SFS users find this to be adequate.
• Access to SFS via VPN is substantially slower due to the inherent delays of being on a WAN, as well as limited bandwidth available thru most ISP’s.

There are a variety of conditions which make access to CIFS “shares” slower at home compared to being on-campus.

• CIFS is a local-area network protocol which works best with low latency and high bandwidth. When you use it from home, you are using it over a wide-area network and the internet.
• The internet typically cannot deliver the same bandwidth compared to being on-campus.
• Your ISP may offer lower UPLOAD bandwidth than DOWNLOAD bandwidth.
• Your ISP and the internet have significantly higher latency compared to being on-campus.
• Accessing files across a wide-area network is slower than if the file was on your local hard-drive.
• The “Bandwidth-delay product” has a large impact on performance, compared to being on-campus.
• MacOS has poor performance with “Finder” when accessing CIFS “shares” remotely, command-line is significantly faster.

Since these conditions are outside of our control we cannot “tune SFS” to improve performance while off-campus.

See the Speed On- or Off-Campus page for additional details.