To avoid placing a global catalog in every Active Directory site and not requiring a global catalog server for every logon, you can use Universal Group Membership Caching.
Managing universal group membership caching
Getting ready
To enable Universal Group Membership Caching for an Active Directory site, all domain controllers in the site will need to run Windows Server 2003, or a newer version of Windows Server.
To enable or disable Universal Group Membership Caching, you'll need to be signed in with an account that is a member of the Enterprise Admins group.