Not Quite NFS, Soft Cache Consistency for NFS
Rick Macklem
University of Guelph
Abstract
There are some constraints inherent in the NFS protocol that result in
performance limitations for high performance workstation environments.
This paper discusses an NFS-like protocol named Not Quite NFS (NQNFS),
designed to address some of these limitations. This protocol provides
full cache consistency during normal operation, while permitting more
effective client-side caching in an effort to improve performance.
There are also a variety of minor protocol changes, in order to
resolve various NFS issues. The emphasis is on observed performance
of a preliminary implementation of the protocol, in order to show how
well this design works and to suggest possible areas for further
improvement.
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