Thursday, 16 May 2013

Directory Services - the "White Pages" of the Network

Directory services provide detailed info about users or objects on a network. Early examples include the WHOIS service. Later in the 1990s came Novell Netware. Then came LDAP, which was designed to run on TCP/IP. AD was designed to run on LDAP.

Some abbreviations needed to understand the LDAP specification:

TLS - Transport Layer Security
PDU - Protocol Data Unit
SASL - Simple Authentication and Security Layer

AD technology is a shining example of Microsoft confidently embracing Internet technology such as LDAP and TCP/IP. AD also borrows a lot of concepts from the X.500 directory structure.

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