In addition to the standard HTTP/WebDAV protocol, Subversion also provides an RA implementation that uses a custom protocol. The libsvn_ra_svn module implements its own network socket connectivity, and communicates with a stand-alone server—the svnserve program—on the machine that hosts the repository. Clients access the repository using the svn:// schema.

This RA implementation lacks most of the advantages of Apache mentioned in the previous section; however, it may be appealing to some system administrators nonetheless. It is dramatically easier to configure and run; setting up an svnserve process is nearly instantaneous. It is also much smaller (in terms of lines of code) than Apache, making it much easier to audit, for security reasons or otherwise. Furthermore, some system administrators may already have an SSH security infrastructure in place, and want Subversion to use it. Clients using ra_svn can easily tunnel the protocol over SSH.