Domain Users Vs Authenticated Users
The authenticated users group can be used to grant permissions across a forest but domain users is a security group for users in a specific domain.
Domain users vs authenticated users. Authenticated users was first introduced in windows nt 4 0 sp3. The authenticated users group contains users who have authenticated to the domain or a domain that is trusted by the computer domain. The authenticated users group includes all users whose identities were authenticated when they logged on. Authenticated users will contain all manually created user accounts in all trusted domains regardless of whether they are a member of the domain users group or not.
The authenticated users group contains users who have authenticated to the domain or a domain that is trusted by the computer domain. The everyone group includes all members of the authenticated users group as well as the built in guest account and several other built in security.