I know that since version 1.40 Cryptomator can use Dokany (on Windows) as an alternative to WebDAV
I’ve read that Dokany will be the preferred method going forward and that it (apparently) offers better performance than WebDAV
My use case may be rather unusual, let me describe it
I’m running a backup job to a remote (offsite) Windows server which I access via a VPN (LogMeIn Hamachi in my case but that’s irrelevant)
I created my vault directly on a shared folder of the remote server, so I don’t have a local vault. Cryptomator is running on my PC and my vault can be accessed by my backup software as if it were any other network drive
I didn’t know if this setup would work, but fortunately it does. I can backup my files this way and they remain encrypted on the remote server. So far, so good
My VPN connection to the remote server is quite stable but maybe not as stable as a LAN connection
I tested both methods, Dokany and WebDAV. I’m getting better performance (about 10%) and also more resilience to network hiccups from WebDAV than Dokany
So, a couple of questions
Is Dokany’s better performance the same in all cases? Only with local vaults? Both with local and cloud vaults?
Is what I’m seeing logical or expected given my connection?
Is WebDAV better suited than Dokany for my use case?
Well we prefer Dokany not solely because of the performance we‘re getting out of it today. It is more because of the potential performance it can have if it is fully optimized. With WebDAV this took us some time, too. Also, Dokany offers more filesystem features for future releases.
That said, WebDAV has its strengths:
WebDAV is a network protocol and as such WebDAV clients are used to handling connection problems. It starts with higher timeouts but can be more. Of course it vastly depends on the client, but it doesn‘t surprise me to see the Windows WebDAV client to be more relaxed than when seeing a Dokany volume which is treated like a local volume and bombarded with small file requests.
It looks like one of the issues is thumbnail generation. When mounted with Dokani, having a directory with many files opened in thumbnail view causes the desktop environment (explorer.exe) to slow to a crawl, whenever thumbnails need to be regenerated. This can be triggered by innocuous interactions like scrolling or changing the sort order.
By contrast, when mounted via WebDAV, the issues are handled more graciously. Thumbnails may still appear slowly, but they don’t cause the desktop environment to become laggy anymore.
It looks like Windows is doing some things synchronously by default, but asynchronously when it expects access delays.