Network Extensible File System
Protocol Specification (2/12/90)
Comments to:
sun!nfs3
nfs3@SUN.COM
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2550 Garcia Ave.
Mountain View, CA 94043
1.0 Introduction
The Network Extensible File System protocol (NeFS) provides transparent remote access to shared
file systems over networks. The NeFS protocol is designed to be machine, operating system,
network architecture, and transport protocol independent. This document is the draft specification
for the protocol. It will remain in draft form during a period of public review. Italicized comments
in the document are intended to present the rationale behind elements of the design and to raise
questions where there are doubts. Comments and suggestions on this draft specification are most
welcome.
[...]
Although it has features in common with NFS, NeFS is a radical departure from NFS. The NFS
protocol is built according to a Remote Procedure Call model (RPC) where filesystem operations
are mapped across the network as remote procedure calls. The NeFS protocol abandons this model
in favor of an interpretive model in which the filesystem operations become operators in an
interpreted language. Clients send their requests to the server as programs to be interpreted.
Execution of the request by the server’s interpreter results in the filesystem operations being invoked
and results returned to the client. Using the interpretive model, filesystem operations can be defined
more simply. Clients can build arbitrarily complex requests from these simple operations.
https://www.donhopkins.com/home/nfs3_0.pdf
Network Extensible File System Protocol Specification (2/12/90)
Comments to: sun!nfs3 nfs3@SUN.COM
Sun Microsystems, Inc. 2550 Garcia Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043
1.0 Introduction
The Network Extensible File System protocol (NeFS) provides transparent remote access to shared file systems over networks. The NeFS protocol is designed to be machine, operating system, network architecture, and transport protocol independent. This document is the draft specification for the protocol. It will remain in draft form during a period of public review. Italicized comments in the document are intended to present the rationale behind elements of the design and to raise questions where there are doubts. Comments and suggestions on this draft specification are most welcome.
[...]
Although it has features in common with NFS, NeFS is a radical departure from NFS. The NFS protocol is built according to a Remote Procedure Call model (RPC) where filesystem operations are mapped across the network as remote procedure calls. The NeFS protocol abandons this model in favor of an interpretive model in which the filesystem operations become operators in an interpreted language. Clients send their requests to the server as programs to be interpreted. Execution of the request by the server’s interpreter results in the filesystem operations being invoked and results returned to the client. Using the interpretive model, filesystem operations can be defined more simply. Clients can build arbitrarily complex requests from these simple operations.