Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!ima!think!barmar From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs Subject: Re: Suggestion for improved NFS monitoring Keywords: retries, xids Message-ID: <33151@think.UUCP> Date: 8 Dec 88 17:40:38 GMT References: <773@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> <1287@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> Sender: news@think.UUCP Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA Lines: 23 In article <1287@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> jim@cs.strath.ac.uk writes: >Worse, there doesn't appear to >be any way that a client can ask the server to slow down, though an >overloaded NFS client should not be as much of a problem as an overloaded >server. A client should never be overloaded. NFS is based on RPC, so a server never sends unrequested data. If a client is overloaded it is because it is sending requests faster than it can handle the responses. This might happen because it sends several requests in sequence, without waiting for each to get a response, in an attempt to increase throughput. If it is sending too many requests this way, and the server is much faster than the client, it may indeed get responses back faster than it can handle. But instead of asking the server to slow down, the client can simply slow down its requests; instead of asking for 10 blocks of a file at a time, it could ask for only five. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar