Explain the benefits and drawbacks of client caching in distributed file systems.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

With client caching, the client can access the cached file locally without remotely
accessing the server across the network.Hence client caching reduces the server load and the
network traffic, making “remote” access as fast as a local access. With client caching, the
server can transmit a large chunk of data to the client rather than just send responses to specific
data requests, so that the client can get the subsequent data from the cache not the
server. The major drawback of client caching is inconsistency, because multiple copies of a
file are distributed to various clients.When a client modifies a file, the system must make sure
that all clients that share the same file have the same view of the file.