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What is the difference between tail -f and tailf in unix?

I am trying to show the tail of a text file. If the file is small, there is no difference. However, if the file is too large (~ 5 gB), tailf does not respond. Tail -f , on the other hand, works just fine. What is the difference between the two?

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On the man page:

   tailf  will print out the last 10 lines of a file and then wait for the
   file to grow.  It is similar to tail -f but does not  access  the  file
   when  it  is not growing.  This has the side effect of not updating the
   access time for the file, so a filesystem flush does not occur periodi-
   cally when no log activity is happening.

http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/tailf1.html

If he does not have direct access to the file, he will have some difficulties with large files, depending on the settings of your machine.

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