Windows® 2000 Active Directory™

Chapter 2. Introducing Active Directory

All major network operating system (NOS) manufacturers include some form of a directory that stores information about network resources, such as users, groups, computers, printers, and so forth. One of the distinguishing factors for choosing a NOS in large enterprises is the directory. An enterprise directory must scale itself to support hundreds of thousands and even millions of objects, and it must be available for rapid and secure access across a distributed network environment, using a variety of different network transmission mediums and speeds.

There are a number of solid directory products on the market today. Netscape provides a directory called the Netscape Directory Server; Novell's is called ...