Windows 2000 Server Versus Novell NetWare 5.1

I am unaware of what all Novell has to offer in this category but it does seem to have limited cross platform solutions, however I know that I am not doing this paper Novell 6.0, but I do feel that they (Novell) went back to the drawing board to help with this problem. Also I would like to say that it was not always so easy for NT to access other cross platforms either.
             There are a few categories that mainly would be the focus between choosing between the two Operating Systems.
             Global Data Availability is a must with any network and here are the specifications between Microsoft Active Directory and Novell Directory Services.
             Partition boundary is apart of a Windows 2000 domain. Active Directory can easily span many sites and WAN links therefore enabling direct access to and efficient searching of objects across site boundaries. Replication is optimized automatically between sites and over slow network links. Global Catalogs are updated simultaneously with other replication cycles to ensure that they are continually kept up to date and a catalog enforces object- and attribute-level security. .
             Novell recommends that partitions should not span WAN links, effectively limiting the scope of efficient searching to a site but therefore adding more security to the Directory Services. Searching for objects directly across partitions requires tree walking and as compared to AD (Active Directory) it seems to be the same but in Microsoft's view. Configuring NDS partitions to span WAN links requires complex configuration and from what I have read about this seems to make it look very troublesome. NDS Catalogs are likely to be out of date since catalogs are rebuilt only at scheduled intervals (default is 24 hours) back in the old NT days replication was not instantaneously done and with Win2K AD Servers this does seem to work very nice, but be sure to have DNS configured properly or life with Active Directory is going be hell.