Syngress - Eleventh Hour Network+ Exam N10-004 Study Guide (11 ...

Network Access Security 135
■ eDirectory was developed by Novell for Novell NetWare networks. Previous
versions for Novell NetWare 4.x and 5.x were called Novell Directory Services
(NDS).
■ OpenLDAP was developed by Apple for networks running Mac OS X Servers.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol that enables clients
to access information within a directory service, allowing the directory to be
searched and objects to be added, modified, and deleted.
■
■
■
■
Characteristics of LDAP are as follows:
■ LDAP was created after the X.500 specification that uses the Directory
Access Protocol (DAP).
■ LDAP directories follow a hierarchy using a tree-like structure, where the
top of the hierarchy is called the root. The root server is used to create the
structure of the directory, with organizational units (OU) and the objects
branching out from the root.
■ Parts of the directory structure may exist on different servers. Segmenting
the tree based on organization or division and storing each
branch on separate directory servers increases the security of the LDAP
information.
■ The topmost level of the hierarchy generally uses the DNS namespace to
identify the tree.
Characteristics of the OU are as follows:
■ OUs are used to identify different branches of the organization or
network.
■ To identify the OUs, each has a name that must be unique in its place in
the hierarchy.
■ Each OU can be nested in other OUs.
■ You can’t have two OUs with the same name in the same parent OU.
■ You can have OUs with the same name in different areas of the hierarchy.
Objects and Attributes:
■ The name given to each object is referred to as a common name, which
identifies the object but doesn’t show where it resides in the hierarchy.
■ You can’t have two objects with the same name in an OU.
■ A distinguished name is used to identify the object’s place in the hierarchy.
■ The distinguished name is a unique identifier for the object and is made
up of several attributes of the object. It consists of the relative distinguished
name, which is constructed from some attribute(s) of the object, followed
by the distinguished name of the parent object.
Schema and Classes:
■ The schema defines the object classes and the attribute types.
■ Object classes define what the object represents (that is, user, computer,
and so forth) and a list of what attributes are associated with the
object.
■ Each of the attributes associated with an object is defined in the schema.
■ Because LDAP is binary, to view the attributes of an object, the information
can be represented in LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF).