Why does NFS use UDP by default?

unix networking rpc nfs
jdizzle picture jdizzle · Feb 25, 2009 · Viewed 34.6k times · Source

I'm sure there's some ancient legacy reason for it, but what is it? It seems like a service that's geared towards reliable data delivery.

Answer

dwc picture dwc · Feb 25, 2009
  • NFS was originally designed to be used on a LAN where loss rates are very low.
  • UDP is faster, and has less overhead
  • NFS is stateless, so it's simple for clients to retry

Note that NFS v3+ can use TCP.

Related questions

How can I get the IP address from NIC in Python?

When an error occurs in a Python script on Unix , an email is sent. I have been asked to add {Testing Environment} to the subject line of the email if the IP address is 192.168.100.37 which is the testing server. This …

Read More
How to determine the IP address of a Solaris system

What command do I want to issue when I want to know the IP address of the Solaris machine I'm logged onto?

Read More
What do pty and tty mean?

I noticed there are many mentions of pty and tty in some opensource projects, could someone can tell me what do they mean and what is the difference between them? Thanks!

Read More