[net.unix-wizards] Just how reliable is NFS

JTW@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (John T. Wroclawski) (09/12/86)

    From: "Steve D. Miller" <steve%umcp-cs.uucp@BRL.ARPA>
    Subject: Re: Just how reliable is NFS?

       Nope.  As far as I can determine (by looking at the rpc stuff that's
    going on, and by being familiar with how NFS hands things off to UDP/IP
    to have them sent), there is no checksumming going on....

Sun gets away with this because ethernet provides CRC error detection
at the hardware level. Thus an ethernet may lose your packet
completely, but it is very unlikely to deliver one with an error. Some
other commonly used types of network hardware do not have this
characteristic; UDP/NFS implemented on top of such a medium would be
quite unreliable if UDP checksumming was turned off.
-------