Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-lsd-client-finding

draft-ietf-lsd-client-finding



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Internet-Draft                                                Ryan Moats
draft-ietf-lsd-client-finding-00.txt                                AT&T
Expires in six months                                       January 1998




                   LDAP Clients Finding LDAP Servers
             Filename: draft-ietf-lsd-client-finding-00.txt


Status of This Memo

      This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working
      documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
      areas, and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also
      distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

      Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
      months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other
      documents at any time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-
      Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work
      in progress.''

      To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check
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      (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East
      Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

Abstract

   This document discusses methods available for LDAP clients to
   discover the existance and location of LDAP servers. It is based on
   previous and ongoing IETF work.

1. Introduction

   The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) [1] can be used to
   build "islands" of servers that are not a priori tied into a single
   Directory Information Tree (DIT.) Here, it is necessary to determine
   how a client can discover LDAP servers. This documents discusses the
   available methods

2. Client Discovery of LDAP Servers

   LDAP clients may have a list of preconfigured LDAP servers included
   with them that a user can select from.  Here, some of the servers in



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   the preconfigured list might provide the functionality described in
   this document, to allow for simpler clients.

   If not configured with a LDAP server, a non-DHCP client should follow
   the sequence of steps specified in [1] (which uses DNS [2] and the
   Service Location Protocol [3]) with the target service being LDAP in
   order to find an LDAP server.  If a DNS record is found for a name
   that begins with ldap (i.e. ldap.tcp.foo.com or ldap.foo.com) a
   further DNS lookup for a TXT record under that name would return the
   root of that server's subtree.  A DHCP-aware client may use the DHCP
   extension specified in [4] to locate LDAP servers as an alternative
   to the sequence specified in [1].

3. Security Considerations

   Since this draft only summarizes available methods, it adds no
   additional security considerations to those inherent in the
   referenced documents.  Implementors are strongly recommended to read
   and follow the security considerations provided in the referenced
   documents.

4. Acknowledgments

   Many thanks to the members of the LSD working group, for their
   contributions to previous drafts. The work described in this document
   is partially supported by the National Science Foundation,
   Cooperative Agreement NCR-9218179.

5. References

   Request For Comments (RFC) and Internet Drafts documents are
   available from <URL:ftp://ftp.internic.net> and numerous mirror
   sites.

[1]         R. Moats, M. Hamilton, P. Leach, "Finding Stuff (How to dis-
            cover services)," Internet Draft (work in progress), June
            1997.

[2]         P. V. Mockapetris. "Domain names - concepts and facilities,"
            RFC 1034.  November 1987.

[3]         J. Veizades, E. Guttman, C. Perkins, S. Kaplan, "Service
            Location Protocol," RFC 2165, June 1997.

[4]         L. Hedstrom, L. Howard, "DHCP Options for Locating LDAP
            Servers," Internet Draft (work in progress), July 1997





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6. Author's address

   Ryan Moats
   AT&T
   15621 Drexel Circle
   Omaha, NE 68135-2358
   USA

   Phone:  +1 402 894-9456
   EMail:  jayhawk@att.com









































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