The Name Cache Name cache is for recent (hot) filename lookups Originally a global hash table, sized to the fixed number of vnodes Not really suitable for a larger number of vnodes. Solution? the cache need not be global - when we do lookups, we know the direcotry vnode - cache is now a RB trees (positive and negative) in each directory vnode. Total size of cache still globally limited. Scales to large numbers of vnodes and stays fast.