Network File System (NFS)

Network File System (NFS)

Network File System (NFS), developed by Sun Microsystems, is a family of file-access protocols that are a considerable advancement over FTP and TELNET. Since Sun made the NFS specifications available for public use, NFS has achieved a high level of popularity.

NFS consists of two protocols:

eXternal Data Representation (XDR). Supports encoding of data in a machine-independent format. C programmers use XDR library routines to describe data structures that are portable between machine environments.
Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). Function as a service request redirector that determines whether function calls can be satisfied locally or must be redirected to a remote host. Calls to remote hosts are packaged for network delivery and transmitted to RPC servers, which generally have the capability of servicing many remote service requests. RPC servers process the service requests and generate response packets that are returned to the service requester.