2.5.5 Problems with RPC

RPC provides location transparency except
Failures
More failure modes in dist sys than on single machine, since machines or network may crash. Need support for exceptions
Performance
Cost of procedure call < < same machine rpc < < network rpc. Programmers must be aware RPC is cheap but not free. Caching helps, but failures more complex.
We will examine problems more fully in the coming lectures.

Ian Wakeman 2005-02-22