Location transparency
Encyclopedia
In computer networks location transparency describes names used to identify network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

 resources independent of both the user's location and the resource location.

A distributed system will need to employ a networked scheme for naming resources.

In other words it is an idea that the resources can be accessed by a user from anywhere on the network without knowing where the resource is located. A file could be on the user's own PC, or thousands of miles away on other servers.

Software using network transparency

These well-known software, or types of software, can or do use network transparency:
  • Distributed file systems
    Network File System
    Network File System is a network file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed. NFS, like many other protocols, builds on the Open Network Computing...

     such as the Andrew File System
    Andrew file system
    The Andrew File System is a distributed networked file system which uses a set of trusted servers to present a homogeneous, location-transparent file name space to all the client workstations. It was developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew Project. It is named after Andrew...

    .
  • MythTV
    MythTV
    MythTV is a free and open source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living-room TV, and turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or home theater...

     back-ends stream, and otherwise interact, with front-ends transparently to the user.
  • GNOME
    GNOME
    GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

     virtual filesystem
    GNOME VFS
    GnomeVFS is short for GNOME Virtual File System. It provides an abstraction layer for the reading, writing and execution of files. It was primarily used by the Nautilus file manager and other GNOME applications before GNOME 2.22....

    .
  • KDE
    KDE
    KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

     KIO
    KIO
    KIO is part of the KDE architecture. It provides access to files, web sites and other resources through a single consistent API. Applications, such as Konqueror which are written using this framework can operate on files stored on remote servers in exactly the same way as they operate on those...

    .


Network protocols providing location transparency

  • It is a standard feature of TIPC
    TIPC
    Transparent Inter-process Communication is a network communications protocol for inter-process communication that was specially designed for intra-cluster communication.- Features :Some features of TIPC:...

    to address Port Names regardless of the network Node they were opened on.
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