9P The Simple Distributed File System from Bell Labs

Documentation

• Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Manual Section 5 - Plan 9 File Protocol, 9P: This is the most authoritative 'specification' of the 9P protocol. The intro(5) page is a good place to start reading about 9P. See also the equivalent Inferno Manual Section 5 and its corresponding intro(5).
• The Ubiquitous File Server in Plan 9 by C. H. Forsyth
• The Styx Architecture for Distributed Systems by Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie.
• The Organization of Networks in Plan 9 - Connecting the pieces. The details in the paper are outdated but the ideas still apply.