Speed vs accessibility | NFS vs SMB vs FTP

Hey guys,

I’m sitting with a little headache here. Obviously, I’m not 24/7 at home and also want to watch a movie or series from my collection when I’m not at home. As I’d like to sync my movies and progress, I have to use a remote address for my collection, instead of a local address (I.e. NAS.local or 192.168.x.x). This, for my iPad as well as my local Apple TV.

My data is stored on a new gen Synology NAS that somehow doesn’t allow me to use SMB over a remote address (perhaps a setting wrong, feel free to suggest), NFS is only local and FTP… Well that works. But my problem is speed vs accessibility. Simply, because in terms of speed it is:
NFS > SMB > FTP

So in order to access my collection both inside and outside the house, I have to use (as far as I can tell) the slowest protocol. Gladly, 90% of streaming is in doors, yet I want to have my movie collection accessible everywhere.

What can I do to optimize both speed and accessibility? Should I stick with FTP (or SFTP) or is there another approach we can take?

Thanks!

I would definitely be starting with why you can’t access files through SMB over the remote address first. Are you feeling like SMB is underperforming even in the house? What version of SMB is being used from NAS to ATV?

I temporarily switched to NFS but I lost patience with the hassle of getting it going with all of my devices. SMB keeps up just fine for me even streaming higher bitrate 4K HDRs.

I’m also in the same predicament. I have my library setup as SMB, don’t want to change that and lose all my fixed metadata matches. Any help would be great. Using a Synology NAS. I have a public IP I can forward ports, I want to be sure my connection is encrypted for streamed content. Trying to stream from Apple TV at another home.

Locally, ftp should be the fastest. If it is not then maybe there is something not working with your network settings or connections or cables.

Thanks! Is there anyway to switch my library over to FTP without losing all the metadata matches I’ve had to fix?

If you add the FTP share BEFORE you delete the other and let it populate everything, you’ll end up with doubles for everything which is fine, just let Infuse complete the scan and iCloud sync and then you can delete the SMB share. Then after Infuse has had a chance to re-scan and sync you’ll be back down to one of each and the FTP share should have all of your corrections included.

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Thanks, I didn’t think of that.

Unrelated, is FTP the most secure way you would think to stream between homes? I have my parents accessing it through Plex, but I don’t love Plex, you can’t fix matches from phone or Apple TV, and I can’t figure out how to get it to sort by modified date like Infuse, so a library rebuild there everything goes by name except for files added after the rebuild.

FTP is not secure by any means. You could use FTPS but there is a big overhead for a secure connection that may or may not prevent you from using it.

Thanks. How about WebDAV? I noticed Infuse offers that and my NAS has that available, I’ve never used it though.

Here’s a guide someone posted for WebDAV. I believe there are some library limitations for WebDAV but don’t remember what they are.

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Consider that Infuse does not transcode, so your internet connection (specifically your upload speed paired with your parents’ download speed, minus overhead and bandwidth lost to other household members using either connection) must be fast enough to stream your content at >100% it’s native bitrate.

If not, you might have to personally transcode prior to making the content available to the folks.

I find running a Plex Media Server on my Synology NAS to be the most efficient way to access my content from home and out of home.

The fastest protocol I found seems to be DLNA though, but that won’t work remotely and it’s not great as Infuse is unable to categorize it.

SMB works just fine remotely on my Synology NAS, just make sure to open the port on your firewall and forward it.

You can also sync the file locally if you’re patient.

Not sure why SMB wouldn’t work remotely, but I personally prefer to VPN home and then connect via the local network.

I did find this explanation which may be relevant:

Using SMB shares over internet is often throwned upon because it causes headaches to firewal admins. While (more) standard protocol like SSH (including SFTP), SMTP, or IMAP only require opening one single port server side (22 for SSH), or one port for raw protocol and a distinct one for the SSL version, SMB requires a bunch of ports.

Simply finding which ones are required for a specific use case if far from a trivial issue. In fact you will have to dive into Microsoft reference docs (many pages to find that…) and probably a bit of trial and error tests. For that reason, this protocol is seldom directly opened on Internet, and is much more ofter only made available through a VPN access: the authentication is made at the VPN level, and the VPN protected access is then seen as a local one with the same privileges (no firewall involved)

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:+1:t3: (I agree)