Microsoft currently has approximately 16,000 user accounts and 35,000 network nodes worldwide. The Microsoft staff is evenly divided: About half the employees are located at or near the Redmond, Washington campus, and the rest are distributed among approximately 150 sites in 52 countries. All sites require full access to information and electronic mail.
In order to fulfill the goals of worldwide access to corporate information and to demonstrate its commitment to Windows NT Server technology, Microsoft designed its worldwide network around the Windows NT domain structure. The Microsoft worldwide-domain strategy includes the following goals.
To meet these goals, the Microsoft Information Technology Group (ITG) implemented a multiple master-domain model. The plan uses a relatively small number of first-tier, master-account domains (which are administered by ITG) and strategically placed PDCs and BDCs, to provide optimum availability and performance.
Many sites are connected to the network by (slower) 64K links. These are not yet cost-effective to upgrade and upgrades are not available in some locations. When requested, ITG will provide administration of second-tier domains.
Microsoft ITG worked to keep the number of master account domains as small as possible in order to achieve the following objectives.
Microsoft ITG chose to limit the number of departmental, site, and developer server domains because it is easier to divide large domains than to combine many small ones into a larger domain when needed. For example, there is one ITG-NETWORKS domain. All servers for the Corporate Networks department are maintained in this domain.