Remote Procedure Call

networking, programming (RPC) A protocol which allows a

program running on one host to cause code to be executed on

another host without the programmer needing to explicitly code

for this. RPC is an easy and popular paradigm for

implementing the client-server model of distributedcomputing. An RPC is initiated by the caller (client)

sending request message to a remote system (the server) to

execute a certain procedure using arguments supplied. A

result message is returned to the caller. There are many

variations and subtleties in various implementations,

resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPC

protocols.

Sun RPC is defined in RFC 1057 and ONC RPC in RFC1831.

(2003-06-04)