As part of the Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 Server

Windows Server

Windows Server is a brand name for a group of server operating systems released by Microsoft Corporation. All are part of Microsoft Servers.- Members :This brand includes the following software:* Windows 2000 Server* Windows Server 2003...

 Operating Systems

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

, the browser service

Browser service

Browser service or Computer Browser Service is a feature of Microsoft Windows to let users easily browse and locate shared resources in neighboring computers. This is done by aggregating the information in a single computer 'Browse Master'...

 is used to host information of other Windows computers within the same Windows domain or TCP

Transmission Control Protocol

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...

/IP

Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

 network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

. Browsing in these terms is specific to viewing network resources within the Windows network such as the available domains

Windows Server domain

A Windows domain is a collection of security principals that share a central directory database. This central database contains the user accounts and security information for...

 and computers. The information, called a Browse List, is held by the browser and primarily consists of the computer names and the services each of the computers offer. There are several browser roles: the Backup Browser, the Master Browser, and the Domain Master Browser.

The Domain Master Browser is necessary on a routed

Routing

Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network , electronic data networks , and transportation networks...

 TCP/IP

Internet protocol suite

The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP from its most important protocols: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol , which were the first networking protocols defined in this...

 network, that is, when a Windows domain spans more than one TCP/IP network. When a Windows domain spans multiple subnets

Subnetwork

A subnetwork, or subnet, is a logically visible subdivision of an IP network. The practice of dividing a network into subnetworks is called subnetting....

 each of the subnets has an independent browser called the Master Browser. The Master Browser is responsible for the browse list within its respective subnet and portion of the domain on its subnet. The Domain Master Browser is used to collect information from each of the Master Browsers via the NetServerEnum API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

 call. Once collected the list is merged with the Domain Master Browsers list for its own subnet. This merged list forms the enterprise wide browse list for the domain. This merged list is then distributed to the Master Browsers in each subnet so that the enterprise list can be available to computers requesting services.

The Domain Master Browser is located on the domain Primary Domain Controller

Primary Domain Controller

A Primary Domain Controller is a server computer in a Windows domain. A domain is a group of computers , where access to a variety of computer resources is controlled by the PDC. Various account types exist in the domain, the most basic is the "guest" or "anonymous login" account...

, or PDC.