RPC Features

This section explains the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) features.

The features of RPC include batching calls (Batching Remote Procedure Calls), broadcasting calls (Broadcasting Remote Procedure Calls), callback procedures (RPC Call-back Procedures), and using the select subroutine (Using the select Subroutine on the Server Side). Batching allows a client to send an arbitrarily large sequence of call messages to a server. Broadcasting allows a client to send a data packet to the network and wait for numerous replies. Callback procedures permit a server to become a client and make an RPC callback to the client's process. The select subroutine examines the I/O descriptor sets whose addresses are passed in the readfds, writefds, and exceptfds parameters to see if some of their descriptors are ready for reading or writing, or have an exceptional condition pending. It then returns the total number of ready descriptors in all the sets.

RPC is also used for the rcp program on Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). See rcp Process on TCP Example.