The Network File System (NFS) is a technology that allows the transparent sharing of files between UNIX and Linux systems connected via a Local Area Network, or LAN. NFS has been around for a long time; it's well known and used extensively used in the Linux and UNIX worlds. In particular, NFS is often used to share home directories among many machines on the network, providing a consistent environment for a user when he or she logs in to a machine (*any* machine) on the LAN. Thanks to NFS, it's possible to mount remote filesystem trees and have them fully integrated into a system's local filesystem. NFS' transparency and maturity is what makes it such a useful and popular choice for network file sharing under Linux.