We have a remote location connected to our main network via 384k wan link. The PCs at that location are Win95 (not members of any domain). Our primary network is Netware 4.11. At that remote location, I installed 5 Windows 2000 Pro workstations with netware client and also made them members of an NT 4 domain where the closest domain controller is across the wan link (since our primary network is Netware, we don’t have the resources to put a bdc at each or our remote locations). After getting these workstations up and running, the utilization over the wan link was so high that the users at the remote location noticed a significant slowdown of network applications to the point that they were almost unusable. Now I can understand that this might be possible during the morning when the win2k workstations are logging into the domain but the lag was consistent all day long. After removing these workstations from the domain and having the users log on locally (instead of the domain), the wan utilization returned to normal.
I am told that there is a “bug” in Win2k that anytime a user (who has logged on to a win2k workstation (that is a member of a domain) with their domain user) accesses anything on their workstation (like localprograms, resources), the workstation first validates the rights of the user with the domain controller each time a local resource/program is accessed. Is this true? If so, how do I stop this constant traffic to the domain controller or reduce thelarge amount of network traffic generated by this workstation without installing a bdc at that location? If not true, then any idea why the wan utilization went “through the roof” all day long while these machines where part of the domain and returned to normal when removed from it.
