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Workshop

Internet File S ystems: WebNFS And CIFS

Fetching Web Pages: Has HTTP Met Its Match?
Despite the hype from WebNFS and CIFS advocates who are claiming that Web browsing will be much faster once Webmasters replace "http://" and "ftp://" hyperlinks with WebNFS' "nfs://" and CIFS' "file://" links, we're not so certain. And we advise you to be wary: Most press releases, quotations and white papers are comparing WebNFS' and CIFS' performance to that of plain-vanilla HTTP version 1.0.

HTTP 1.0 opens up a brand-new TCP socket to download each item on a Web page (including very small image files), so HTTP 1.0 perform ance is suboptimal. This is because of the overhead of TCP socket creation and tear down, not to mention that TCP's slow-start and network congestion-control algorithms were designed for longer streams of data. But many HTTP 1.0 implementations, including those in Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator 3.x and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) 3.x, have a Keepalive mechanism that drastically improves performance by keeping TCP sockets open for multiple downloads. Surpassing that, the upcoming HTTP 1.1 spec has even greater performance enhancements, and it can transfer just a portion of a file by specifying byte ranges.

A comparison of WebNFS, CIFS and HTTP 1.1 download times in a Web browser setting would produce a far more modest difference among the protocols.

In addition, current Web browsers cache files transferred via HTTP onto the client's local disk. Whether the first batch of WebNFS- or CIFS-aware browsers will do the same for non-HTTP files remains to be seen.

Although HTTP is missing many elements characteristic of a decent file system, it does contain support for numerous items that make it a decent hypermedia transfer protocol. HTTP's support for a Common Gateway Interface (CGI); proxies; server-side with scripting; and negotiation options between server and browser for language, compression and encryption, constitute a lot of bang for a modest performance price. Of course, it is not an all-or-nothing game; some Web links can be transferred via HTTP and others via WebNFS or CIFS. But keep in mind that all Web browsers on all platforms will continue to support the latest version of HTTP, while only subsets of browsers or platforms may be able to handle WebNFS or CIFS.

We'd be surprised to see a widespread proliferation of WebNFS or CIFS URLs among Web site designers, except at sites that require collaborative assistance, such as file locking. Expect the Internet file system protocols battle to be fou ght at the OS-client level, while HTTP will continue to overwhelmingly domi nate Web page transfers.