.NET has a thing called remoting where you can pass objects around between separate appdomains or even physical machines. I don't fully understand how the magic is done, hence this question.

In remoting there are two base ways of passing objects around - either they can be serialized (converted to a bunch of bytes and the rebuilt at the other end) or they can inherit from MarshalByRefObject, in which case .NET makes some transparent proxies and all method calls are forwarded back to the original instance.

This is pretty cool and works like magic. And I don't like magic in programming. Looking at the MarshalByRefObject with the Reflector I don't see anything that would set it apart from any other typical object. Not even a weird internal attribute or anything. So how is the whole transparent proxy thing organized? Can I make such a mechanism myself? Can I make an alternate MyMarshalByRefObject which would not inherit from MarshalByRefObject but would still act the same? Or is MarshalByRefObject receiving some special treatment by the .NET engine itself and the whole remoting feat is non-duplicatable by mere mortals?