Question on sharing media files on a Network Share

[mindwalker]

Hey guys,

Sorry about the noob question. I've read articles in the main page however there's still a small issue that's unclear to me.
I have a Mac and I'm considering getting myself a NAS. In this NAS I will have most of my media files.
If I use a network share in the NAS to share those files (such as SMB, CIFS, NFS or others) and I mount the share on my client Mac, when I try to play a file what's really happening ?

a) is the file being streamed to the client, as if it were local but with read speeds maxing out at WiFi downlink speed ?
b) or is the file first copied entirely into the client and only then, opened ?

Because if it's like b, then I can see a problem with big files, causing quite a bit of overhead opening new ones. It will be even worse if you're trying to modify those files in the NAS (such as... re-tagging your MP3 library)
If this is the case, I will still prefer to keep my music library with my client computer and only keep in the NAS things that are more "obsolete". However this sort of defeats the purpose of it, since I'd like it to have the super set of my media files, not the sub set.

Thanks for any hints guys!

 

[thiggins]

It depends on your player. But generally, the file is read from the NAS at whatever rate the application and network connection support.