microsoft services

micro computers

Microsoft Active Directory services in Windows 2000 and Windows XP replace the computer browser service used in earlier versions of Windows to provide the network basic input/output system (NetBIOS) name resolution. The browser service in Windows 2000 is provided for backwards compatibility with client computers that are running earlier versions of Windows.

This article describes the basic methods by which a server computer provides browse list functionality to client computers on the network. For a more detailed explanation of the browser components, see the following documents:
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit, Chapter 3, "Windows NT 4.0 Browser Service."
The "CIFS/E Browser Protocol" document available at the following Microsoft Web site:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/cifs/cifsbrow.doc (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/cifs/cifsbrow.doc)
The browser registry settings described in the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit Regentry.hlp file.
The primary function of the browser service is to provide a list of computers sharing resources in a client's domain along with a list of other domain and workgroup names across the wide-area network (WAN). This list is provided to clients that view network resources with Network Neighborhood or the NET VIEW command.