RFC 1777 (rfc1777) - Page 1 of 22

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

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Network Working Group                                           W. Yeong
Request for Comments: 1777             Performance Systems International
Obsoletes: 1487                                                 T. Howes
Category: Standards Track                         University of Michigan
                                                                S. Kille
                                                        ISODE Consortium
                                                              March 1995


                 Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

   The protocol described in this document is designed to provide access
   to the X.500 Directory while not incurring the resource requirements
   of the Directory Access Protocol (DAP). This protocol is specifically
   targeted at simple management applications and browser applications
   that provide simple read/write interactive access to the X.500
   Directory, and is intended to be a complement to the DAP itself.

   Key aspects of LDAP are:

   - Protocol elements are carried directly over TCP or other transport,
     bypassing much of the session/presentation overhead.

   - Many protocol data elements are encoding as ordinary strings (e.g.,
     Distinguished Names).

   - A lightweight BER encoding is used to encode all protocol elements.

1.  History

   The tremendous interest in X.500 [1,2] technology in the Internet has
   lead to efforts to reduce the high "cost of entry" associated with
   use of the technology, such as the Directory Assistance Service [3]
   and DIXIE [4]. While efforts such as these have met with success,
   they have been solutions based on particular implementations and as
   such have limited applicability.  This document continues the efforts
   to define Directory protocol alternatives but departs from previous
   efforts in that it consciously avoids dependence on particular



Yeong, Howes & Kille
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