Intro

These documents are organized into four sections.

• Design and Development is a collection of internal Sun memos, plans, and design documents from 1983-1986.

• Release includes public material associated with the roll-out of NFS in 1985-1986.

• Assessment discusses the way in which NFSv2 was received, including suggestions for improvements.

• Evolution covers the complicated process of developing NFS V3 and V4.

Design and development

1983

• Bob Lyon: Sun Network Data Representation and Remote Procedure Call

1984

• Bob Lyon et al: Sun Distributed File Service Meeting Notes
• Bill Joy: Sun Network File Protocol Design Considerations
• Bill Joy: Sun UNIX Modifications to use the Sun Network File Service
• Bill Joy: Design of the Sun Network File System _{(draft 1)}
• Bill Joy: Design of the Sun Network File System _{(draft 2)}
• Bill Joy: Sun UNIX Modifications to use the Sun Network File Service
• Bob Lyon: Sun RPC Software Architecture
• Bob Lyon: Sun Remote Procedure Call Protocol Specification Version 2
• Bob Lyon et al: NFS Project Plan _{(March 2 draft)}
• Bob Lyon et al: NFS Project Plan _{(March 28 draft)}
• Bob Lyon, Gary Sager et al: Overview of the Sun Network File System
• Rusty Sandberg: Changes to Programs and User View in the Sun Networked File System
• Bill Joy: NFS Preliminary Benchmarking

1985

• Bill Joy & Steve Kleiman: NFSBOX Design Overview
• Rusty Sandberg: Sun Network File System Protocol Specification
• Bill Joy: A Storage Network for Inexpensive RISC Workstations
• Bob Lyon: ND Elimination Strategy _{(June 1985 draft)}
• Steve Kleiman: Vnodes: An Architecture for Multiple File System Types in Sun UNIX
• David Rosenthal & James Gosling: Learning from Andrew: A Low Cost Per Seat Strategy for Sun
• Bob Lyon: Sundisk Product Plan
• Dan Walsh: Notes on Diskful and Diskless Performance

1986

• Bob Lyon: ND Elimination Strategy _{(December 1986 draft)}

Release

1985

• Sandberg et al: Design and Implementation of the Sun Network File System (paper)
• Sandberg et al: Design and Implementation of the Sun Network File System (slides)
• Dan Walsh et al: Overview of the Sun Network File System
• Rusty Sandberg: The Sun Network File System: Design, Implementation and Experience

1986

• Geoff Arnold: rpc.pcnfsd.c source code

Assessment

1985

• Deb Sheedy: Competitive Analysis of Sun Microsystems’ Network File System
• Rob Gingell: Point of Contact

1987

• Riccardo Gusella: The Analysis of Diskless Workstation Traffic on an Ethernet

1989

• Brent Callaghan & Tom Lyon: The Automounter
• Bill Nowicki: Transport Issues in the Network File System
• RFC 1094: NFS: Network File System Protocol Specification
• M. Satyanarayanan: A Survey of Distributed File Systems
• Chet Juszczak: Improving the Performance and Correctness of an NFS Server

Evolution

1990

• Rick Macklen: Lessons Learned Tuning the 4.3BSD Reno Implementation of the NFS Protocol
• Moran et al: Breaking Through the NFS Performance Barrier
• David Rosenthal: Evolving the Vnode Interface

1991

• Geoff Arnold: Change and Non-Change in NFS

1993

• IBM: TCP/IP for OS/2 (Archive.org link to documentation for NFS on OS/2)
• Joe Moran & Bob Lyon: The Restore-o-Mounter: The File Motel Revisited

1994

• Chet Juszczak: Improving the Write Performance of an NFS Server
• Rick Macklem: Not Quite NFS, Soft Cache Consistency for NFS

1995

• RFC 1813: NFS Version 3 Protocol Specification
• Brian Wong: NFS gets revved in Solaris 2.5

1998

• RFC 2339: An Agreement Between the Internet Society, the IETF, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the matter of NFS V.4 Protocols
• X/Open: Protocols for Interworking: XNFS, Version 3W

1999

• Richard Martin & David Culler: NFS Sensitivity to High Performance Networks