[349] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Alternatives to NFS (Was: Re: Should the NREN be funded?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (stev knowles)
Mon Mar 11 19:09:43 1991
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 17:46:26 -0500
To: "Manavendra K. Thakur" <thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu>
From: stev@ftp.com (stev knowles)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Apparently Sun already has added checksums to NFS - I'm told Sun's C2
security package has that feature. I'm also told that the C2 package
doesn't work all that well or smoothly, so perhaps in practice that is
why you say Sun refuses to add checksums to NFS. Also, I don't know
whether other vendors provide checksum capabilities in their
implementations of NFS.
i wasnt aware of this. i *do* know that many people dont have this kind of
secure unix. i also know that we provide patches to all versions of the
standard SunOS from 3.1 on, but there are some people who dont want to adb
their kernel.
But I hasten to point out that adding checksums is hardly enough to
correct the deficiencies of NFS! Largely because NFS is both
i would rather leave the religious arguements to happen over someone buying
dinner. much more civilized.
Finally, BSD 4.4 has a publicly available (not public domain)
implementation of NFS. You could always ftp this code and hack on it
as much as you like.
like i said, alot of people dont want to do this, they want packaged
solutions to common problems.
So the point of this note is that as far as Internet standards are
concerned (de facto or otherwise), none of us are really at Sun's
mercy when it comes to accessing files remotely and transparently
this was not meant to be a shot at Sun. i am not trying to make Sun out as
evil, they just made different technical decisions than i would have, for
what i consider bad reasons. i am sure they feel differently.
The backers of NREN would do well to look at the history of AFS as it
developed out of university research and migrated to a commercial
product. Presenting AFS as a case study to Congress might help
persuade that august body to fund similar endeavors in the future to
help fulfill both the research and educational missions of NREN.
until AFS is supplied with the default operating system, and supported (as
much as NFS is) byt the equipment vendor, rather than by a third party, i
dont see AFS as being a serious contender. if one must pay extra, there are
too many people who wont want to when something that works well enough is
supplied free.
