1. A method for enabling bus connectivity to at least two hardware devices coupled to a data network by network interface circuitry (NIC), the method comprising: providing a network bus driver on each hardware device connected by the network bus; registering a driver of each NIC on any hardware device that is a processor node with the respective network bus driver, to permit the respective network bus driver to effect communications with the hardware devices via the data network; and instantiating device drivers on the any processor node for controlling respective slave hardware devices through the network bus driver; whereby a network bus is defined over the data network.