I have a question about Network Discovery in Windows, take Windows 7 as an example for the time being.As we know, the machine itself can be found on the network and also can found other machine if the Network Discovery feature was turned on.The essential of Network Discovery is just make the Windows Firewall open the ports which are necessary for discoverying the machines on the network.So, I just want to know which componments are necessary for discoverying other machines over the network.when I open the "Network" explorer, there might be other device listed there, how does it work? How does it found other device? which componments/protocol was used to achieve this. "Computer Browsing" service?NetBT ?can anyone point it out?thanks!

Also, I found that the "Computer Browser" service was disabled by default in Windows 7/2008/R2. Does it mean microsoft be ready to deprecate Browsing mechanism in the future Windows release.When I turned on the "Network Discovery", the computer browser service was still under off status. Does it mean this service do nothing in the device enumeration process?

Hi, Regarding you question, I would like to share the following with you: What is network discovery? Windows Vista Networking Goodies, Part 2: Device Service Discovery Missing Network Map under Network and Sharing Center in Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Hope this helps. Thanks.Nicholas Li - MSFT

thanks for your info Nicholas ! But looks like they are not giving me the completely answer.I want to know if Browsing mechanism is still the requirements for enumerating computers on the network?

As you suspect, the computer browser service does not have a long-term future. It is an NT legacy app which relies on Netbios over TCP/IP (Originally it used Netbeui, but it was modified to run with TCP/IP). Netbios is not supported in IPv6, so eventually the browser service will become obsolete. The replacement in IPv6 is Network Discovery. The computer browser service still works with WIn7/Server 2008 R2 for backward compatibility through IPv4. Bill

all right.thanks Bill.