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From: srradia@watmath.UUCP (sanjay Radia)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Sun Network File System and their RPC
Message-ID: <11204@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Jan-85 10:25:50 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.11204
Posted: Wed Jan 30 10:25:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Jan-85 00:25:45 EST
References: <379@unisoft.UUCP> <1939@sun.uucp>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 16

Since Sun's file servers don't maintain any states between requests 
all their file server operations are idempotent (can be
repeated any number of times) with the exception of append (which they
don't support) and create (which does not work well depending on the perms).
Thus, I suspect, Sun's RPC supports the "atleast once" semantics which
is very easy to implement and takes advantage of the low error rate on
the ethernet. Of cource this requires that all operations are idempotent.
File servers like the Sun's NFS and Xerox's WFS have idempotent operations which
can use RPC with "atleast once" semantics but many applications require
"exactly once semantics" and Sun's RPC package might not be very useful.
-- 

		sanjay
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