Network Abstractions: Remote Procedure Calls

Remote procedure calls (RPCs) provide an abstraction of a local procedure call to the developers by hiding the complexities of packing and sending function arguments to the remote server, receiving the return values, and managing any network retries.

What is an RPC?

RPC is an interprocess communication protocol that’s widely used in distributed systems. In the OSI model of network communication, RPC spans the transport and application layers.

RPC mechanisms are employed when a computer program causes a procedure or subroutine to execute in a separate address space.

Note: The procedure or subroutine is coded as a regular/local procedure call without the programmer explicitly coding the details for the remote interaction.