Thanks for the reply. It appears that that thread ends in a question. I know that EJB 3.1 introduces the requirement that EJBs must be "mounted" in the global JNDI namespace. But a JNDI name is within a Context. So I still don't see how an @EJB reference could portably refer to an EJB mounted--globally or not--in a remote Context. Perhaps that's the point of the thread you referenced? Or perhaps your point is the opposite--i.e. that coupled with an absolute "corba:iiop" scheme (and a host? and a port?) one could fashion a reference that would be traversed reliably? Kind of hard to tell; I hope you'll forgive my attempts here to read the tea leaves--a sentence or two about how I'm supposed to take that other thread would be heartily appreciated. Thanks again for the link. Best, Laird View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4262247#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...