Network transparency

The term network transparency describes the property of hiding all network-specific actions from the user or making them invisible (transparent) . The user of a protocol cannot distinguish whether actions are triggered locally or via the network .

Graphical user interfaces

Numerous modern graphical user interfaces , such as the X Window System , rio or Aqua, are network-transparent. In these environments, a graphical server is started on the computer that is to output the user interface, with which all components of the user interface are connected: window management , interprocess communication , font servers , the individual application programs, etc. connected by a network are distributed all over the world, does not matter, since the communication takes place via fixed protocols.

Databases

In a centralized database , the actual data (the storage system) is shielded from the user. In a distributed database, the data is accordingly shielded from another resource and abstracted for this: the network . In this way it makes no difference whether an application is running on the same computer as the database or whether the client accesses the database via the network.

File systems

While file systems on data storage media that are directly accessed can generally only be opened for reading and writing at the same time by an operating system, there are numerous network and cluster file systems that can make data storage available in a network-transparent manner . For this purpose, SMB / CIFS , NFS and CXFS are known and widespread . These generally abstract existing local file systems using various protocols. The client then integrates this data transparently into its file system structures, so that ideally it makes no difference to the user whether the data he is accessing is on his local hard drive or on a server .