Slow folder browsing on smb shares

Question

I'm having big problems browsing a smb share on a Windows 2003 Server share.
Whenever i change folders in the share it can take up to 1-2 minutes before the new folder content appears.
I tried lots of things such as editing /etc/smb.conf and also /etc/sysctl.conf without success.
Anyone have any ideas on what could be wrong?

Answer 1

Apple has always seemed to give poor performance for remote users compared to an equivalent Windows setup running over the same remote link. I think this is a combination of several things.
Firstly, the Finder on a Mac gets a lot more information to display a directory listing than Windows Explorer on Windows does. The Finder is of course getting the same file/folder names but in addition can get Finder comments, labels (colours), custom icons, etc. which Windows Explorer would not.
Secondly, I am convinced that AFP is not as efficient over slow links and/or high latency links as SMB.
Thirdly, I am also convinced that the Finder is grotesquely inefficient in sending and processing commands and replies, whereas perhaps Windows batches things up. As an ancient example of this anyone else remember the floppy disk shuffle on the original Macs?
I suspect because Apple have a very fast pipe to the Internet they have not appreciated how bad this can be. They need perhaps to consider getting a WAN link simulator and then they can see the problem and hopefully introduce more optimisation.
Unfortunately there is not much you can do about any of these things, you could try using SMB on the Mac rather than AFP as this might cause the Finder to not try getting some of the extra information like colour labels. Avoiding using the Finder if possible is the best option, you could help achieve this by keeping shortcuts to files on the Server so you don't have to keep browsing to the folder itself.