A common real world Network Reshare use case involves Mac access to NAS storage, such as NetApp NAS systems. Most NAS systems do not include the ability to host AFP file shares. Mac users are left with no choice but to connect to NAS file shares using the native OS X SMB client. This typically results in suboptimal file browsing, transfer, and search performance, along with frequent Mac application incompatibilities, file name issues, file corruptions, etc.
Using Network Reshare, file shares on NAS systems can be made available to Macs through a Windows server running Access Connect. Macs connect to Access Connect AFP file shares and Access Connect interfaces with the NAS system through the NAS’s existing SMB/CIFS file shares. In this way, incompatibilities and issues on the Mac side are addressed by allowing native AFP access and Access Connect’s uses Windows server-side SMB access to NAS storage, which provides improved performance and throughput compared to Mac SMB client access. As a result, the performance of Mac AFP file share access though Access Connect to NAS storage is most often better than that same Mac accessing the same NAS files directly over SMB.