Each Microsoft Exchange Client obtains public folder hierarchy information from a public information store. If you have dedicated public servers, those servers respond to the clients for both hierarchical tree information and content data. As a result, it is possible for the servers to become overwhelmed with traffic. In this case, maintaining a public information store on each server enables clients to retrieve the hierarchical tree information from their local server while connecting to the public server for content data. In this way, requests for various types of data can be distributed for best performance.