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From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: SLIP documents
Summary: UPD cksums are used in modern NFS
Message-ID: <84702@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 8 Feb 91 23:31:01 GMT
References: <1991Feb6.172144.12605@nmt.edu> <4320@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> <1991Feb8.203703.25654@zoo.toronto.edu>
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Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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In article <1991Feb8.203703.25654@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> 
> (For those who don't get the point of the ":-) :-)", NFS uses UDP without
> checksums.  And people wonder why NFS is so unreliable...)


Everyone!  Please stop repeating this complaint.  It doesn't take much
perception or knowledge to find many real and inconvenient differences
between NFS and other UNIX file systems. If complaining about NFS brings
you joy, then complain about open-unlink, caching, security, ownership &
UID's, dates, and idempotency holes.  If you don't like using NFS, then use
something else like AFS or "the emerging standard, RFS" (AT&T press
release, 1986).

Anyone with an NFS implementation that does not use UDP checksums should
either fix or enjoy it.  The NFS on common and current workstations does
use UDP checksums by default.  Ours do.  I'm told that Sun's does as
of the NFS 3.2 source release.

I personally think the choice made in 1984 (85?) was correct for 1982
thru 1988.  The fact that for years (!) NFS has used UDP with checksums
turned on makes our disagreement about the correctness of the original
decision almost as interesting today as the old arguments whether "HLL's
will replace assembly language".


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com