This is just a guess, but on Windows it must be similar to the way they treat the infrared port - namely, it's a particular way of encapsulating NetBIOS with a special protocol - on infrared this is "fast infrared protocol". You can then ping by machine name, and WINS resolves it. As far as I know, you can't directly bind IP to the infrared port.

Once the special protocols are in place, it's like any other Windows networking connection.