A multicast-based distributed file system for the internet

Abstract

JetFile is a file system designed with multicast as its distribution mechanism. The goal is to support a large number of clients in an environment such as the Internet where hosts are attached to both high and low speed networks, sometimes over long distances. JetFile is designed for reduced reliance on servers by allowing client-to-client updates using scalable reliable multicast. Clients on high speed networks prefetch large numbers of files. On low speed networks such as wireless, special caching policies are used to decrease file access latency. The prototype implementation of JetFile is on the JetStream gigabit local area network which provides hardware support for many multicast addresses. The multicast Internet backbone (Mbone) is the wide area testbed for JetFile.