Vendors Battle Over Next Internet File System

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Browser wars, step aside. The next battle looming in cyberspace is over which file system will provide the underpinnings for better file transfer and group collaboration services on the Internet. Such a file system, whether from Sun or Microsoft or some other vendor, would improve upon the Internet's current HTTP and FTP.

Sun's proposed new standard, the Web Network File System (WebNFS), is just what the Web needs, claims Brian Croll, director of marketing for Solaris Servers at Sun. "The Internet is like a dirt road with a lot of potholes. One of these potholes is the slow speed of file transfers," Croll says. An advantage of WebNFS is its superior performance over FTP and HTTP for transferring large blocks of data, Sun s ays. WebNFS also lets you edit documents instead of simply viewing them as you do in today's browsers. This read/write capability will allow vendors to develop applications that let you collaborate with others from within your Web browser or Web-enabled application, without having to cut and paste text from the browser into another program.

Sun's NFS has been the TCP/IP file distribution standard for more than a decade. Not tied to any architecture or operating system, NFS is the glue that holds together heterogeneous file systems. Until recently, there hadn't been an open implementation that would work consistently over Internet connections. But with Sun's submission of WebNFS to the Internet Engineering Task Force as a proposed open standard, that's no longer true.

WebNFS springs ahead of the Net's hypertext (HTTP) and data transfer (FTP) protocols because neither of them are network file systems. HTTP must constantly close and open sockets to transfer information, and both HTTP and FTP require high latency between packets. WebNFS cuts down on both the interprocess communication and latency factors. This results in WebNFS offering block file transfers that are up to 10 times faster than the current versions of HTTP and FTP, Sun claims.

WebNFS already has powerful supporters, including Oracle and Spyglass, who are incorporating it into their browsers. Auspex, IBM, and Sequent plan to include WebNFS in their Web servers. Sun, of course, is putting all its resources behind WebNFS. The most visible sign of this support is the Netra NFS file servers, which depend as much on WebNFS as they do on HTTP for data transfer.

However, two prominent names are missing from the list of WebNFS adopters: Microsoft and Netscape. HTTP and FTP leave much to be desired for seeking, reading, and writing operations, agrees J Allard, a program manager at Microsoft. But Microsoft's remote file access protocol, called Common Internet File System (CIFS), complements HTTP. CIFS is based on the company's service message blocks (SMBs),which are already used in existing network components of Windows and NT, Allard notes, as well as on Unix.

Allard finds Sun's WebNFS speed claims to be somewhat disingenuous. "Byte Read-Range and HTTP connection keep-alive is evolving HTTP into a rival for WebNFS," he says. According to Allard, it may be too late to expect the entire Internet community to make a fundamental shift from HTTP to a new standard for file transfers.

Netscape, usually a staunch Sun ally, is still evaluating WebNFS, according to Andreas Cook, product PR manager. "Even if we turn it down now, we may use it in the future," he says.

"The big powers of the Web will fight over WebNFS. If Sun is successful, adding WebNFS will require many companies to retrofit their servers and browsers," says Ross Rubin, senior analyst for Jupiter Communications (New York City), a research firm that covers consumer on-line services and the Internet.

WebNFS is a threat to Netscape, says Stephen Au ditore, president of Zona Research, an Internet market research house. "WebNFS plus Java is a direct competitor to HTTP and HTML," he says. "If Sun is successful in replacing the existing infrastructure, all the other major Web companies are in serious trouble." According to Auditore, Netscape is balking because WebNFS/Java would undercut all its technology dollars.

As for Microsoft, "Redmond already has its own distributed file system oriented to the NT environment and SMB, and they would love to see it expanded onto the Net," Auditore says. After all, whichever company controls the standards also controls the marketplace: WebNFS's success or failure could drastically influence Sun's and other companies' revenue streams.

Will WebNFS become the Net standard? "A lot will depend on whether Sun can gain the mind share of people using other third-party HTTP servers," says analyst Rubin. "If someone ports WebNFS to popular freeware servers, like Apache, it will be a matter of time until people start hacki ng together WebNFS add-ons for both Netscape's and Microsoft's browser and server product lines." If that happens, then the Web could be completely reinvented with WebNFS as its standard.