Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol
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1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol
1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol
This revision of the NFS protocol addresses new requirements.
The need to support larger files and file systems has prompted
extensions to allow 64 bit file sizes and offsets. The revision
enhances security by adding support for an access check to be
done on the server. Performance modifications are of three
types:
- The number of over-the-wire packets for a given
set of file operations is reduced by returning file
attributes on every operation, thus decreasing the number
of calls to get modified attributes.
- The write throughput bottleneck caused by the synchronous
definition of write in the NFS version 2 protocol has been
addressed by adding support so that the NFS server can do
unsafe writes. Unsafe writes are writes which have not
been committed to stable storage before the operation
returns. This specification defines a method for
committing these unsafe writes to stable storage in a
reliable way.
- Limitations on transfer sizes have been relaxed.
The ability to support multiple versions of a protocol in RPC
will allow implementors of the NFS version 3 protocol to define
clients and servers that provide backwards compatibility with
the existing installed base of NFS version 2 protocol
implementations.
The extensions described here represent an evolution of the
existing NFS protocol and most of the design features of the
NFS protocol described in [Sandberg] persist. See Changes
from the NFS version 2 protocol on page 11 for a more
detailed summary of the changes introduced by this revision.
Next: 1.2 Useful terms
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol