MAIN FEATURES                                                                                                               Back To Home

As we discussed in our Introduction to NFS, the main features offered by the Network File system are as follows:

• Transparent Access
• Server State
• Portability
• Fast Recovery From Failure
• Network Protocol Independence
• Performance
• Security

These features are implemented within the NFS client/server framework which reduces costs by enabling heterogeneous resource sharing across the entire network.

Servers make their file systems sharable through a process called exporting.  

Clients gain access to these file systems by adding them to their local file "tree" via the mount process. 

The NFS protocol provides the medium for communication between client and server process over the network. NFS primarily utilizes two seperately defined protocol mechanisms:

1. External Data Reprsentation (XDR) - a presentation layer protocol that facilitates the translation of data between heterogeneous computers and operating systems.

2. Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) - a session layer protocol that forms the basis for message exchange between client and server.

We will talk in greater detail about how these features have been achieved in the next section - Influence of features on Design and Architecture

Source: http://www.eecs.lehigh.edu/~zhz3/CSC350/NFS/nfs.html