It doesn't emulate 9P (protocol); it is in fact the Plan 9 implementation.
The fan-in/fan-out of 9p connection is done by 9pserve (src/cmd/9pserve.c,
partially emulating the Plan 9 mnt driver.  Servers publish a 9p endpoint,
and 9pserve is used to let multiple clients to establish 9p connections to
that server.

On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 10:02 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 11:43 AM Mayuresh Kathe <mayuresh@kathe.in> wrote:
>
>> i apologise up-front for asking this on 9fans, but, how is acme and
>> plumber and all it's utilities (including upas) made to work under
>> non-plan9 systems via plan9port; on say something like linux or even mac
>> os x?
>>
>> do they have some kind of user-level library which emulates 9p?
>>
>
> That's exactly right.
>
>         - Dan C.
>
>