We recently upgraded from NT4 (PDC) to Server 2003. The server 2003 was on the network as a domain member of the NT domain for a few months working as a file server. to achieve the upgrade we used a temporary box that we installed NT4 on and made it a backup domain controller. We then promoted it to PDC and unplugged the old PDC. We then did the upgrade and made the server 2003 a domain controller and unplugged the temp. The upgrade went really well and everything is working fine but I have a question. the name of the domain has always been oce not oce.local or dot anything else. Will this be a problem?

.local just means it's not a real domain name. There are three types of AD setups 1, Same Internal and External DNS Names (something.com) 2, Different Internal and External DNS Names (internal - something.local, external something.com) 3, Internal DNS Name as a Subdomain of the External DNS Name (internal - AD.something.com, external - something.com with AD.something.com delegated out to your internal DC) Unless you are a large corp, 1 or 2 works best. if you are .local your alright