All stubs are inherited from "RemoteStub" which itself is inherited from "RemoteObject". RemoteObejct provides its own implementations for basic object semantics like "hasCode", "equals", "toString" etc. Stub internally contains a concrete implentation of "RemoteRef" object which basically contains the host, port and object id of the remote object it is refering. If two stubs are having references pointing to the same remote object (same host name, port and object id) which are considered as equal. "Equals" on stubs DOES NOT involve any remote call to the remote objects