Patent ID: 6516344
Filing Date: 2003-02-04
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for reducing network traffic for remote file system accesses by sending information specifying unallocated regions within a file from a server to a remote client, the method comprising:receiving, at the server, an access to a file residing in storage on the server; if the access is a read operation to read data from the file, determining whether the read operation is directed to a region of the file that is presently unallocated in the storage; if the read operation is directed to the region of the file that is presently unallocated, sending information to the remote client specifying regions of the file that have not been allocated in the storage; and if the read operation is directed to the region of the file that is presently allocated, reading the data from the file in the storage, and sending the data to the remote client.