Thanks to all who replied. Some noted security problems with tfpt.
Those were duly noted. There was no clear choice between tftp and
nfs based upon timeliness, however it was noted that nfs handled
errors more robustly.
We proceeded with the experiment, and ran a banchmark case. Although
we have only run a single test in both, we saw a measurable improvement
(from 1:33 for nfs to 1:24 for tftp).
This improvement likely due to the elimination of directory lookups.
We did this by runnning tftp in a secure mode for which the invariant
directory tree is specified, and by modifying the application to prepend
the variable path component up to that point. Under nfs, we had been
mounting the entire filesystem, so several directory lookups were required
to reach the served files. Similar mount point and access tuning could
probably have been done for nfs as well, but that path has not yet been
trod.
Kirk
Robin Landis <robin.landis@imail.exim.gov> wrote:
You should check on tftp at www.cert.org. In the class they offer
they recommend disabling it for security reasons. Maybe you're
already aware of that, but thought I'd respond to be sure.
Tom Mornini <tmornini@infomania.com> wrote:
In my experience with NCD xterms, NFS was faster, and did not
present a noticable load increase.
"Rodney C. Marable" <marable@firefly.net> wrote:
tftp is a MAJOR security hole. See "Practical Unix Security"
for more information.
Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM> wrote:
TFTP is usually slower (only 512 bytes in transit at anyone time)
TFTP only supports small files (upto 2^16 blocks of 512 bytes)
I'd stick with NFS or perhaps go for FTP.
Harvey Wamboldt <harvey@iotek.ns.ca> wrote:
I've used TFTP with VRTX. It worked adequately but the protocol is
not as robust as NFS. On the other hand it is far simpler which
suited me since I rolled my own ;) The TFTP protocol will give up
under network errors where NFS will keep trying. TFTP is based on UDP
while NFS can use either UDP or TCP with the advantages/disadvanages
of both. NFS, especially the newest version, will, under some
circumstances give you faster file transfers than TFTP. Finally, I
think, NFS includes options for both aynchronous and synchronous file
operations (synchronous guarantees that writes complete before
returning an acknowlegement) as well as providing various parameters
for configuring it's operation.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:11:59 CDT