An empirical study of a wide-area distributed file system

Abstract

The evolution of the Andrew File System (AFS) into a wide-area distributed file system has encouraged collaboration and information dissemination on a much broader scale than ever before. We examine AFS as a provider of wide-area file services to over 100 organizations around the world. We discuss usage characteristics of AFS derived from empirical measurements of the system. Our observations indicate that AFS provides robust and efficient data access in its current configuration, thus confirming its viability as a design point for wide-area distributed file systems.