A first data mover computer services
data access requests from a network
client, and a second data mover computer is coupled to the first data mover computer for servicing
data access requests from the first data mover computer. The first data mover computer uses a connection-oriented protocol to obtain
client context information and to respond to a session setup request from the
client by authenticating the client. Then the first data mover computer responds to a
file system connection request from the client by forwarding the client context information and the
file system connection request to the second data mover computer. Then the first data mover computer maintains a connection between the first data mover computer and the second data mover computer when the client accesses the
file system and the first data mover computer passes file access requests from the client to the second data mover computer and returns responses to the file access requests from the second data mover computer to the client. In a preferred embodiment, the connection-oriented protocol is the Common Internet
File System (CIFS) Protocol, and multiple clients share a
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection between the first data mover computer and the second data mover computer by allocation of virtual channels within the shared TCP connection and
multiplexing of data packets of the virtual channels over the shared TCP connection.