In Windows Server 2008, Active Directory's automatically created connection objects for domain controllers have an attribute called options with a value of 0x1 = ( IS_GENERATED ). This value tells the KCC (Knowledge Consistency Checker) that the connection object was automatically generated and can be automatically modified or optimized by the KCC. If the connection object is modified by an admin, this attribute is then changed to 0x0 = ( ). Of course, if you can answer my question, you already know all of this...
I need to change the default schedule from "Once Per Hour" to "Four Times per Hour" but still want the KCC to otherwise manage the connections automatically.
Q: If one changes the schedule, and then switches the options attribute back to 1, will the KCC continue to automatically manage the connection?
I don't have a play domain to test against - but if you change the schedule at the "NTDS Site Settings" instead of on each Connection Object, will that accomplish what you want? You may need to delete the existing Objects and let them get recreated with the new schedule.
Obviously, this won't work if you want to change the schedule for only some objects in a site but not all.
(Also, out of curiosity, what problem are you solving by changing this schedule?)
I don't know how I forgot about changing the schedule at the site level instead of at the server level! I combined your approach with mine:
1) Reset the options attribute on the server connection object back to 1 (IS_GENERATED).
2) Changed the schedule at the site level to 4x per hour.
3) Right-clicked on each server's NTDS Settings object and clicked "Check Replication Topology" under the All Tasks sub-menu.
This allowed the KCC to automatically manage the connection again, pulling the new schedule from the site schedule and still maintaining the value of 0x1 IS_GENERATED in the options attribute. Done!