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4.2 DC Referral

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The following sequence diagram shows a DC referral.

Domain controller referral

Figure 16: Domain controller referral

  1. The client sends a REQ_GET_DFS_REFERRAL (section 2.2.2) to CFS-44X-2B29, a DC in the DFSN-DEV domain. The highest DFS referral version understood by the client is 3, as indicated by the MaxReferralLevel field of REQ_GET_DFS_REFERRAL. The DFS path specified in the DFS referral request is the string \dfsn-dev.nttest.microsoft.com, indicating a DC referral.

  2. The DC's response has one referral entry, PathConsumed is 0, ReferralServers and StorageServers bits are set to 0. The referral entry has the VersionNumber field set to 3. The NameListReferral bit is set to 1 in the referral entry. The string pointed to by the SpecialNameOffset field of the referral entry is the domain name for which the DC list returned. The NumberOfExpandedNames field is set to 3, indicating that there are three DCs in the DC list returned. The ExpandedNameOffset field in the referral entry points to a sequence of three strings, each of which is a DC name. The DC names returned are in fully qualified domain name format, because the domain name in the request is also in the fully qualified domain name format.