Patent ID: 7499905

Claim:
A method of accessing information based on Distributed File System (DFS) paths, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of: a server intercepting a request to resolve a path to a file, wherein the request is sent from a client to a DFS root node; wherein the DFS root node maintains a logical name space that includes a mapping between logical paths of network shares and physical location paths identifying network locations where the network shares are physically stored; wherein, based on the mapping, the DFS root node is operable to resolve the logical paths of the network shares to the physical location paths; the server sending, to the DFS root node, the request to resolve the path to the file; the server receiving a response from the DFS root node, wherein the response includes one or more first DFS referrals, wherein each of the one or more first DFS referrals identifies a network entity and a directory exported by the network entity, wherein the file is stored in the directory; in response to receiving the response from the DFS root node, the server adding a second DFS referral to the response, wherein the second DFS referral identifies a particular network entity and a particular directory exported by the particular network entity; wherein each of the second DFS referral and the one or more first DFS referrals is a data structure that includes data identifying a physical location path to a separate copy of the same directory; and the server sending the response to the client; wherein the response sent to the client includes the one or more first DFS referrals and the second DFS referral.