: The child. It can override almost anything from the layers above to suit its specific needs. Real-World Impact

: In large server farms, administrators use machine.config to synchronize security keys across dozens of servers. This ensures that a user can jump from one server to another without being logged out.

: It stores the default machine keys used for protecting data like ViewState in web applications.

: The parent. It inherits from the machine level but can add more specific rules for web servers.