→Use: If we're going to say this we need some sort of benchmark that shows performance improvement over just relying on the OS's block device buffer cache.
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 improve [[boot-up]] time enormously. {{citation needed}}
