I would like to understand how network mounted software works. For example, at my place of work, we have a software server. Each client machine (hundreds of them) automatically mounts directories from the software server on boot. For example, a program like Matlab is installed just once on the software server, but each client machine can start up an instance of Matlab.

What is going on under the hood? Let's say I run /opt/bin/matlab and /opt/ is mounted from the software server, what happens when I press Enter to execute matlab on a client machine? The process is on the client machine, and I've already narrowed down that there isn't any implicit or hidden file transfer (i.e. copying matlab to my machine temporarily for that session) by running matlab on a computer with nearly zero disk space (i.e. not enough room to transfer). Since Matlab was installed on the server, how is my client computer executing it? What mechanism is controlling this? What is happening behind the scenes?