Active Directory® for Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Technical Reference

Chapter 4. Active Directory Replication and Sites

Virtually every company that implements Active Directory directory service in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 will be deploying more than one domain controller. These domain controllers might all be located in one datacenter at the company head office where they are connected by very fast network connections. Or they might be spread across many locations around the world, with a variety of wide area network (WAN) connections linking the company locations. Some companies might have a single domain in a forest, and other companies might have many domains in several domain trees in the corporate forest.

Regardless of how many domain controllers a company has or where those domain controllers are located, ...