NFS, AFP, SMB... Advantages and drawbacks on a Mac OS system Struggling to fix several issues since I switched to Lion (see here and there), I came across several ways of connecting network shares to my MBP: NFS, AFP, SMB, CIFS (maybe others).
What are the differences between all these protocols and what is the one giving the more advantages to a MacOS system?
Essentially, NFS is the Unix way of doing network shares, AFP is the Apple way, and SMB/CIFS (they're basically the same thing) is the Microsoft way. AFP will generally work best with a MacOS system (except that most third-party implementations are currently struggling to catch up with a change made in Lion where an older and less secure authentication method was dropped) because it's better integrated with OS X authentication and with Time Machine.