>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Phalan <mphalan_at_o2.ie> writes:

    Mark> I guess I was just thinking it would be a nice optimization
    Mark> for those cases where clients are strongly connected and
    Mark> trying to access small parts of huge files (bigger than
    Mark> cache). Its ability to operate in a disconnected state is
    Mark> undoubtedly a great feature but not its only one (scale,
    Mark> performance, etc).

Sure.  We've already come a long way in that direction: the virtual
file system abstraction allows users to (mostly) not care about the
strong and weaks points of individual file system implementations.  At
the current state of the art, though, the fact that there are multiple
implementations, with different characteristics, can't be hidden from
the system admin at all.  And sometimes it even impinges on users, as
in the multimedia storage application you describe.

I wonder if you wouldn't be better off with a central web server and a
caching proxy like squid (assuming that the multimedia players can
handle media streamed over HTTP).

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