NFS

[Guy Harris]

> >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.