NT LM Security Support Provider service

[David]

Hi,

We have some monitoring tool to monitor the services. We
are getting alerts that "The NTLMSSP service is gone down"
at least twice in week. But it will restart within 5 min
by itself. Here are my queries.
1. Pls let me know the posibble reasons for this service
down.
2. Pls let me know the role of NT LM Security Support
Provider service in Domain Controller.
3. Pls let me know the effect if I disable the service.

Thanks in advance...

Regards

David