Despite existing in an era where cloud storage has largely taken over as the primary choice for casual file sharing, transferring files over your local network is still essential for any home with multiple devices. Whether it’s a NAS, home lab, or workstation PC, you’ll likely encounter SMB or NFS—the two primary ways to share files locally. They both perform the same function, but take very different approaches to doing so. NFS is significantly faster than SMB, and depending on the workload, it’s not particularly close. The trade-off is that it’s a bit of a pain to get going, but once you do, it can be a game-changer if your situation is well suited for it.