I received a couple of email and comment questions about how Internet Computer Names work and whether there is a central server.  The cool answer is that no, there is no central server.  The whole service is peer to peer based on a technology called PNRP (really ICNs are PNRP names, they just get published for the entire machine rather than a single process as is more normal for PNRP).

Basically, every machine knows about a few other machines basically at random.  Those machines know a few others, who know a few others, etc.  When I want to resolve someone else's name, I can use all of those relationships to track down the machine publishing the name I want.

Obviously that is jumping over a ton of detail.  For more details, check out our overview whitepaper (the PNRP section) at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/p2pintro.mspx.  We also have a new PNRP-specific whitepaper going up sometime next week that should be even better (I will post a comment when it is up).