Group
Policy Loopback Processing
Group Policy loopback
processing, shown in Figure 7, allows for the processing of both the
Computer Configuration and User Configuration nodes within a policy even
if the user object is not in the same container as the computer that
the group policy is linked to. As an example, this function would be
useful with a Remote Desktop Session Host deployment where you want to
apply computer configuration policies to configure the Remote Desktop
server settings but you also want to control the user settings of any
user who logs on to the server, regardless of where the actual user
account is stored in Active Directory.
Group Policy Slow Link
Detection and Network Location Awareness
Group Policy uses several
mechanisms to determine whether a policy should be processed. One of
the mechanisms used by the Group Policy client computer is called slow
link detection. By default, network tests are performed between the
client computer and the domain controller to determine the speed of the
link between the systems. If the speed is determined to be less than
500kbit/sec, the Group Policy does not process any policies. Slow link
detection default settings, along with the ability to disable slow link
detection, are configurable with each policy.
In previous versions, Group Policy utilized the ICMP
protocol or Ping to detect slow links; this setting is shown in Figure 8. With Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows
Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2, Group Policy now uses the
Windows Network Location Awareness service to determine network status.
The slow link detection settings are controlled within the
Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy sections of the
GPO.
