Naming Context Replication in Multi Child Domain

Question

I have a single forest with a root domain and multiple child domains. My questions is:

Should one child domain replicate the naming context or directory partition of another child domain???

Answer 1

Domain controllers with the Global Catalogs feature enabled (which should be all domain controllers - recommended) will replicate the naming contexts of all other domains in the forest. Note that not all attributes are replicated, and the data is available only in read-only.

Answer 2

ok thank you

Therefore, are replication links needed between child domain controllers?

Right now my replication links are set between child domain controllers of the same
child domain and to the root domain

Answer 3

Replication connection objects will automatically be created by default. Even if there is no complete site link coverage in the topology. The ISTG component will take care of that administrative mistake and will create the connections (that could be disabled, but that's on by default).

You can confirm that by looking at the connection objects in the output of repadmin /showrepl *.

In any case, you can also check for complete replication status summary with repadmin /replsum.