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Choosing local versus public domain name for Active Directory
I'm using company.com.qa as my email domain, which I have hosted with my ISP. Can I use same domain name, company.com.qa, for my Windows 2008 Domain Controller? Should I use company.local or something else?
.localas an indicator that a name should be resolved via Bonjour, so they'll try that first. In our case that means a 30 second wait to look up anysomething.something.localaddress that our AD serves up (we went withcompanyname.localbefore realizing this). As well, if you want a Mac server, it will refuse to use a.localname for itself.corp.company.com.qaor whatever is good as well. – Bill Weiss May 16 '12 at 15:04