the session log below says it:
for a 5,6MB transfer,
ftp lasts 9.2 seconds giving a transfer-rate of ~600kb/sec
nfs lasts 42.7 seconds giving a transfer-rate of ~ 13kb/sec
in both cases, the system wasn't used by anyone but me.
I also have to confess that I haven't played with rsize/wsize for nfs.
the cabling is trivial: only three stations on a BNC-cable (the station
in the middle powered down), no router. it's just my private LAN at
home in the kitchen :)
I also am aware that the value for nfs may not be accurate. When the
file is in the cache on the server (i.e. from a previous cp), then the
copy-time may be as fast as about ~ 10 seconds, giving a transfer rate
of 52kb/sec, which is still considerably slower than ftp.
session-log:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
venus:~# ftp ferkel
Connected to ferkel.
220 ferkel FTP server (Version wu-2.4(1) Mon Nov 6 07:22:05 MET 1995) ready.
Name (ferkel:root):
331 Password required for root.
Password:
230-Please read the file README
230- it was last modified on Wed Feb 21 20:29:37 1996 - 81 days ago
230 User root logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd up
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> mget *100*
mget linux-1.3.100.tar.gz? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-1.3.100.tar.gz (5615043 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
5615043 bytes received in 9.2 secs (6e+02 Kbytes/sec)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
venus:~# mount /mnt/ferkel
venus:~# time cp /mnt/ferkel/root/up/linux-1.3.100.tar.gz .
0.01user 4.46system 0:42.73elapsed 10%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps
venus:~#