Shared resource

In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another computer, typically via a local area network or an enterprise intranet, transparently as if it were a resource in the local machine. Network sharing is made possible by inter-process communication over the network.

Some examples of shareable resources are computer programs, data, storage devices, and printers. E.g. shared file access (also known as disk sharing and folder sharing), shared printer access (printer sharing), shared scanner access, etc. The shared resource is called a shared disk (also known as mounted disk), shared drive volume, shared folder, shared file, shared document, shared printer or shared scanner.

The term file sharing traditionally means shared file access, especially in the context of operating systems and LAN and Intranet services, for example in Microsoft Windows documentation. Though, as and similar applications became available in the early 2000s, the term file sharing increasingly has become associated with peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet.

Shared file and printer access require an operating system on the client that supports access to resources on a server, an operating system on the server that supports access to its resources from a client, and an application layer (in the four or five layer TCP/IP reference model) file sharing protocol and transport layer protocol to provide that shared access. Modern operating systems for personal computers include distributed file systems that support file sharing, while hand-held computing devices sometimes require additional software for shared file access.

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