An enterprise network architecture has a trust link established between
two autonomous network systems that enables transitive resource access
between network domains of the two network systems. The trust link is
defined by data structures maintained by each of the respective network
systems. The first network system maintains namespaces that correspond to
the second network system and a domain controller in the first network
system, or a first network system administrator, indicates whether to
trust individual namespaces. An account managed by a domain in the second
network system can request authentication via a domain controller in the
first network system. The first network system determines from the trust
link to communicate the authentication request to the second network
system. The first network system also determines from the trust link
where to communicate authorization requests when administrators manage
group memberships and access control lists.