There are two schools of thought on how network directories
should be planned and configured on a network, as follows:
Centralized network directories.
Decentralized network directories.
The centralized school of thought requires each node on the
internet to have the same network directory. This means that every
node in the network must have an entry in the network directory.
The advantage to this is that you update the network directory in
one place, then copy it to the rest of the world. The disadvantage
is that network directories for large internets are going to be
large.
The recommended way to create and maintain your network directory
using the centralized method is to assign a single node as the central
administrative node. You configure the network directory
on this node and then copy it to all other nodes on the network.
When the network directory is updated, it is updated on the central
administrative node, then copied to the other nodes. This procedure
decreases the possibility of incompatible directories. You may want
to assign a central administrative node for each network or for
the entire internet.
The decentralized school of thought suggests that each network
directory be configured individually on each node. The advantage
to this is that you can customize the network directory on each
node for security purposes using local and global entries. The network
directory will also be smaller because it will only contain entries
for that particular node. However, updates must be done manually
on each node.