NAS or File server - Is there any real speed difference?

[Phunky Phish]

I just thought I would ask this as have been wondering!

I just set up a NAS on my network at home. Write speeds are about 20MB and read about 10MB.

Now a lot of people suggest building an Atom based file server, that way you get full read/write potential of the drives, but do you?

I have a 100m/bit network at work to a nice SBS 2003 and that only transfers at roughly the same speeds.

So, speed for speed, why do so many people say build a file server?

 

[Phunky Phish]

As I said, I have a Xeon server on a 100m/b network (actually 1g/b to the hub, then 100m/b to the 3 pcs connected as they are limited by the nic in the PC) and only get roughly (within 10%) the same speeds as my NAS at home!
So I am running a true file server and getting no major performance boost compared to the NAS!