Yes, Domain query locally is much faster. I'm only speaking of those that have DC around the Globe. Often they may be across SLOW links.

In the past a full query of all DC for us would take about 3 days to complete due to such limited bandwidth for some locations.

Logging to a Database such as with similar detail as SMS I think would be the optimum method if you could get it all setup and working and if you have the experience to setup and maintain such a solution.