JSI Tip 1315. DFS 4.1 clients don't see target change for 1 week.

In DFS 4.1, clients do not see a target directory change for 1 week, unless they restart their computer.

Microsoft hard-coded the Cached DFS Referral Expiration to reduce network traffic.

DFS network traffic is proportional to the number of clients. Doubling the clients, doubles the DFS traffic. Halving the Cached DFS Referral Expiration time, doubles the DFS network traffic.

You can adjust the Cached DFS Referral Expiration by using Regedt32 to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftDfsHostvolumes

On the Edit menu, Add Value name TimeToLiveInSecs, as a type REG_DWORD, and set the data value to the Cached DFS Referral Expiration time in seconds. The default is 604800 seconds (1 week).