Remote Procedure Call


Remote Procedure Call

(networking, programming)(RPC) A protocol which allows aprogram running on one host to cause code to be executed onanother host without the programmer needing to explicitly codefor this. RPC is an easy and popular paradigm forimplementing the client-server model of distributed computing. An RPC is initiated by the caller (client)sending request message to a remote system (the server) toexecute a certain procedure using arguments supplied. Aresult message is returned to the caller. There are manyvariations and subtleties in various implementations,resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPCprotocols.

Sun RPC is defined in RFC 1057 and ONC RPC in RFC 1831.