edirectory question

Hi all - I couldn't find my answer in your archives so I joined the 
list. Thanks for being here.

Background

I'm new to most of this but I managed to configure (for testing) a local 
Novell eDirectory 8.7 LDAP service to respond to a remote request for 
authentication. The client is a php website which requires auth and 
which was built by someone else. I provided the bind user and I can 
create my own local eDirectory users and successfully log them in to the 
website.

The problem

The website owner has a large tree of Novell servers whereas my test 
setup is a single server. We now wish to point the php website at the 
large tree so that vast numbers of employees can login using their 
Novell credentials. The problem is that the credentials are spread over 
a number of org/org units like this ...

maintree
     central (o)
         binduser (cn)
     suburbs (o)
         footscray (ou)
             users (cn)s
         glenroy (ou)
             moreusers (cn)
         bayside (ou)

... and when I try to configure my own eDirectory in a similar 
structure, the binduser cannot find credentials outside its own container.

I can solve the problem by creating an alias object named identically 
for the user in the other container but this is totally unwieldy from 
the viewpoint of the sheer numbers of users. It would be awful to do 
that if there was another way.

Question

Is there another way?

Thanks

Mike