AD connectivity / performance test

Hi,

Is anyone carrying out any monitoring (local or remote) of Windows Domain Controllers?  If I were to carry out a remote LDAPS test to retrieve an OU would the success and connection time for that transaction be a good indicator of 'user experience' ?  I see some monitors on Xymonton looking at the output from DCDIAG.EXE but these will require BBWin or equivalent to be installed and I probably wont get   that authorized and VBS is not well known to me anyway.

Thanks
-- 
Andy