Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.nfs:311 comp.sys.mac.programmer:8085
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!honey
From: honey@uunet.UU.NET (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: NFS and Mac IIs
Message-ID: <62753@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: 6 Aug 89 10:04:40 GMT
References: <8100@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Followup-To: comp.protocols.nfs
Organization: Center for Information Technology Integration, Univ of Michigan
Lines: 8

Tim (Maroney), NFS is called a stateless protocol because the server
does not maintain state on behalf of the clients.  (Other than the
contents of files and directories, that is.)  Client caching for NFS is
as old as the hills.

It has been observed that NFS' statelessness wreaks havoc on server
performance.  (See, e.g., "Scale and Performance in a Distributed File
System" by Howard et al. in ACM TOCS 6:1, Feb 88.)