Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!oliveb!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: NFS
Keywords: TCP/IP
Message-ID: <47821@sun.uucp>
Date: 31 Mar 88 22:04:31 GMT
References: <303@unixprt.UUCP> <3401@psuvax1.psu.edu> <3407@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 23

> >NFS seems to be coupled with TCP/IP. I have not seen anyone running
> >it with other protocols whereas I have seen RFS running with
> >several different TLI providers.
> 
> RPC runs on whatever you want it to, and NFS runs on RPC,
> the particular network protocol shouldn't be that big an issue.

Correct.  I don't know what transport protocols RFS was run atop; many of them
(various Starlan protocols and NPACK) can probably be classified as
"uninteresting" as they are non-standard protocols.

> I have heard that there is a faction within Sun that thinks NFS 
> should run on TCP...

I know of no such faction, but that means nothing.  It could be run atop TCP in
conventional UNIX systems were a kernel TCP transport to be created for it.

It *has* been run as a "proof-of-concept" demo atop the ISO connectionless
network protocol.  At some point, Sun RPC, and thus NFS, will probably run atop
the ISO connectionless transport protocol; RPC would also probably run atop
TP4.  It could presumably be run atop the XNS Packet Exchange Protocol; given
that Xerox plans to do something with SPARC processors running UNIX, this may
eventually happen.