from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Uniform Naming Convention
UNC
<networking> (UNC) Used in {IBM PC} networking to completely
specify a directory on a {file server}.
The basic format is:
\\servername\sharename
where "servername" is the {hostname} of a network file server,
and "sharename" is the name of a networked or shared
directory. Note this is not the same as the conventional
{MS-DOS} "C:\windows" directory name. E.g.
\\server1\dave
might be set up to point to
C:\users\homedirs\dave
on a server called "server1".
It is possible to execute a program using this convention
without having to specifically link a drive, by running:
\\server\share\directory\program.exe
The {undocumented} DOS command, TRUENAME can be used to find
out the UNC name of a file or directory on a network drive.
(1995-11-14)