A condition in which an
operating system or other service allows the user access to a
remote resource through a
network without needing to know if the resource is remote or
local. For example,
Sun Microsystem’s NFS, which has become a de facto industry standard, provides access to shared files through an interface called the Virtual File System (VFS) that runs on top of
TCP/IP. Users can manipulate shared files as if they were stored locally on the user’s own
hard disk.