Hello an thank you for all your help.
I have a hub site with 5 RWDCs and several remote sites with RODCs. The domain functional level is 2008 and all but one RWDC is 2008r2. All RODCs are 2008r2.
All of my RODCs had a manual connections to each RWDC at the hub site. I thought this topology was a bit overkill, so I did some experimenting with one of my RODCs and deleted all the connections. I was going to create one connection and let the KCC handle the rest, but I noticed something strange...................
With no connections ( deleted all manual connections using adsi edit on the RODC and deleted all in sites and services on RWDCs ) the RODC is still replicating with one of my RWDCs at the hub site. All dns zones, configuration, and schema are replicating. This was verified with repadmin /showreps, and repadmin /replsummary. I tried rebooting and running repadmin /kcc to see if things changed, but the box has been replicating for several days.
I know I can recreate the connections and move on, but I feel like I don't have a true understanding of what is really happening, or something is just wrong.
How is this possible, or what am I missing?