Universal Naming Convention

The Universal Naming Convention, or UNC, specifies a common syntax to describe the location of a network resource, such as a shared file, directory, or printer. The UNC syntax for Windows systems is as follows:

\\computername\sharedfolder\resource

where 'computername' is the hostname, 'sharedfolder' is a shared directory with a name chosen by the host providing the share, and 'resource' is a shared directory, file, or printer. The hostname may also be identified by a fully-qualified domain name or by IP address. The 'sharedfolder' may exist anywhere on the remote host system, and is not restricted to the filesystem root directory.