NFS priorities compared to local jobs ??

[Naim Abdullah]

What is the priority given to NFS requests coming in from a remote
machine ? The reason I ask this question is that when I NFS mount
a file system from our VAX 780 running 4.3bsd+NFS (from
Mt. Xinu) onto my Sun 3/60, the response seems to be excellent
even if the VAX is heavily loaded. In fact, if I rlogin into
the VAX and work on my file there, it maybe very slow, but
working across NFS gives me much better response time.

Ofcourse, this can be explained partly by the fact that I am
the only user on my Sun 3/60 while the VAX is being used by
many other people. But, I was wondering whether NFS requests
coming in from a remote machine are serviced before any user
processes in the local runqueue ? If this is true, then my NFS
requests must be slowing down some other person's vi job even
though they have been in the run queue longer and are more
deserving to run. What is the real story behind this ?

		      Naim Abdullah
		      Dept. of EECS,
		      Northwestern University

		      Internet: naim at eecs.nwu.edu
		      Uucp: {ihnp4, chinet, gargoyle}!nucsrl!naim