In a network environment, when a user initiates a request to use a resource that exists on a server in another part of the network, the request has to be forwarded or redirected to the server with the requested resource. The component of the client software that does this task is the redirector.
Redirector
The redirector may also be referred to as a shell or a requester. It is a small part of the network operating system that:
- Intercepts requests in the computer.
- Determines if the requests can be serviced by the local system itself or it needs to be forwarded to the server.
Designators
A designator is an alphabet that is assigned to each network resource. The redirector keeps track of which drive designators are associated with which network resources.
For example, to access a particular shared directory on a remote computer, we can assign a letter of the alphabet, say H, to it. We can then refer to the shared directory on the remote computer as H and the redirector will locate it.