A facility to control all the objects that interact with a network (users, files, directories, peripheral devices, services, etc.) and govern how they can use each other. In particular, the rights of users to access resources or to manage other users can be specified. The various objects are placed into a logical organizational structure, which need not match the physical structure of the network. For example, a research team spread across two campuses, and so two local area networks, can be treated as a single group; if they were later to merge onto one site, and one LAN, their appearance to on the network would not change. Active Directory was introduced with Windows 2000 Server edition and has been developed in subsequent Windows releases.