Re: Beginning taxonomy for finding LDAP servers.

[Jonathan Wood <jonathan.wood@eng.Sun.COM>]

> 
> Method: Service Location Protocol
> 
> A client that supports the service location protcol could do a SLP query for
> LDAP servers.
> This requires that the network be using SLP and and that the servers
> announce themselves.
> This method has the scaling drawbacks of SLP since it depends on that
> method.
> 

Some elaboration on this method:

There is a draft which defines a SLP template for using SLP to discover
LDAP servers at

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-svrloc-ldap-scheme-01.txt

It is also possible to define more precisely SLP's scaling
characteristics. From "draft-ietf-svrloc-protocol-v2-15.txt":

   SLP is intended to function within networks under cooperative
   administrative control.  Such networks permit a policy to be
   implemented regarding security, multicast routing and organization
   of services and clients into groups which are not be feasible on the
   scale of the Internet as a whole.

   SLP has been designed to serve enterprise networks with shared
   services, and it may not necessarily scale for wide-area service
   discovery throughout the global Internet, or in networks where
   there are hundreds of thousands of clients or tens of thousands of
   services.


Finally, a general comment: Since LDAP servers can be such a crucial
part of a network infrastructure, it is essential that the security
considerations of all possible approaches are well understood and are a
major component of the taxonomy.

-Jon