Extending Cluster File Systems beyond Last Miles

The growth of the bandwidth available in WAN links stimulates novel usage of traditional network systems. By extending the boundary of cluster file systems to the customers´ premise, it is now possible to provide home users efficient, dependable, and responsive network storage. In this paper, we identify the primary issue of network latency when implementing cluster file systems across the last miles, and propose a solution by replacing the round-based data transmission protocol of Coda file system with a rate-based one. The performance evaluation of the prototype system shows significant improvements of both throughput and response time for file-transfer operations, especially under high network latency. The result is a latency-resistant cluster file system.