GIO (Gnome Input/Output) is a library, designed to present programmers with a modern and usable interface to a virtual file system. It allows applications to access local and remote files with a single consistent API, which was designed "to overcome the shortcomings of GnomeVFS" and be "so good that developers prefer it over raw POSIX calls."[1]
There is support for network programming, including name resolution, lowlevel socket APIs and highlevel client and server helper classes.
There is support for connecting to D-Bus, sending and receiving messages, owning and watching bus names, and making objects available on the bus.
Beyond these, GIO provides facilities for file monitoring, asynchronous I/O and filename completion. In addition to the interfaces, GIO provides implementations for the local case. Implementations for various network file systems are provided by the GVfs package as loadable modules.