Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is RPC an actual technology? I thought it was more of a protocol design pattern.
Remote Procedure Call is a design paradigm for synchronous call-and-response network communication. The Sun RPC protocol is an actual technology defined in RFC1057: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1057.txt It's not insane, though not terribly relevant in the modern world. The only common technology still using it is NFS.
1: http://nd.edu/~dthain/courses/cse598z/fall2004/papers/birrel...