this has been tagged for six years with no improvement, so just merge with broader concept
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#REDIRECT [[Network block device]]
{{primarysources|date=April 2007}}
A '''Distributed Network Block Device (DNBD)''' is a read-only and caching [[network block device]].
== Features ==
It supports the following main features:
* replication of [[server (computing)|server]]s for robustness,
* multicast communication and [[web cache|caching]] of network traffic for [[scalability]].
These characteristics make it suitable especially for use in [[wireless networks]], e.g. for [[diskless client]]s or to share multimedia files in such an environment.
The servers can export a file or block device equipped with an [[operating system]], movies, [[music download|music]], etc. Several clients can import the block device and access it like a local [[hard disk]]. However, each block transfer over the network can be cached by all clients: if several users on each client start to watch a movie within a certain time interval, the movie data has to be transmitted only once (depending on the cache size). The network is not burdened with unnecessary traffic.
== Use ==
DNBD can be used together with [[cowloop]] or [[unionfs]] in order to get local write [[semantics]], e.g. for diskless clients. Especially in wireless environments with limited [[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]], caching can increase [[boot-up]] time enormously.
