Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/897917/

I recently had cause to reflect on the changes to the NFS (Network File
System) protocol over the years and found that it was a story worth
telling. It would be easy for such a story to become swamped by the
details, as there are many of those, but one idea does stand out from
the rest. The earliest version of NFS has been described as a
“stateless” protocol, a term I still hear used occasionally. Much of
the story of NFS follows the growth in the acknowledgment of, and
support for, state. This article looks at the evolution of NFS (and its
handling of state) during the
early part of its life; a second installment will bring the story up to the
present.