The previous note concerning searching the whole AD tree works fully. Though you must be sure that the server you're authenticating/searching is a Global Catalog server. If not, connecting and binding will fail. Usually there is at least one Global Catalog server in your domain, so if the connect fails try another server it will work. The reason it works is that the Global Catalog server searches the whole domain as where the domain catalog only searches a given OU, offcourse this opposes a security threat as well :)...