Patent ID: 7366720

Claim:
A share discovery system, comprising: a computer configured to conduct a device name query by addressing and sending one or more packets using a predetermined broadcast Internet Protocol (IP) address, the presence of the predetermined broadcast IP address in the packets causing remote devices located on a same Local Area Network (LAN) as the computer to provide their IP address to the computer responsive to observing the predetermined broadcast IP address contained in the packets; the computer configured to correlate received responses to the sent packets to discover the IP addresses of the remote devices; the computer configured to address and send share queries to the remote devices using the discovered IP addresses, the share queries requesting the remote devices to identify available share folders or files located on the remote devices; the computer configured to assemble a list of the remote devices and available share folders or files located on the remote devices, the list assembled using information obtained using the share query; and the computer configured to mount one or more of the listed share folders or files according to user selections such that the mounted share folders or files are not downloaded to the computer during the mounting but are made utilizable by the computer as if stored on the computer; wherein the device name query and the share query are sent from the computer to the remote devices on the network and receive responses from the remote devices back to the computer without going through an intermediary master browser; wherein the device name query is conducted using a NetBIOS name query and the share query is conducted using a NETrShareEnum query.