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899 lines
35 KiB
Plaintext
899 lines
35 KiB
Plaintext
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Network Working Group C. Weider
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Request for Comments: 1309 ANS
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FYI: 14 J. Reynolds
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ISI
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S. Heker
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JvNC
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March 1992
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Technical Overview of Directory Services
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Using the X.500 Protocol
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Status of this Memo
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This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
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not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
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unlimited.
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Abstract
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This document is an overview of the X.500 standard for people not
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familiar with the technology. It compares and contrasts Directory
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Services based on X.500 with several of the other Directory services
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currently in use in the Internet. This paper also describes the
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status of the standard and provides references for further
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information on X.500 implementations and technical information.
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A primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate the vast
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functionality of the X.500 protocol and to show how it can be used to
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provide a global directory for human use, and can support other
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applications which would benefit from directory services, such as
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main programs.
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This FYI RFC is a product of the Directory Information Services
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(pilot) Infrastructure Working Group (DISI). A combined effort of
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the User Services and the OSI Integration Areas of the Internet
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Engineering Task Force (IETF).
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1. INTRODUCTION
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As the pace of industry, science, and technological development
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quickened over the past century, it became increasingly probable that
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someone in a geographically distant location would be trying to solve
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the same problems you were trying to solve, or that someone in a
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geographically distant location would have some vital information
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which impinged on your research or business. The stupendous growth
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in the telecommunications industry, from telegraphs to telephones to
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computer networks, has alleviated the problem of being able to
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DISI Working Group [Page 1]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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communicate with another person, PROVIDED THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO REACH
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THEM.
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Thus, along with the expansion of the telecommunications
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infrastructure came the development of Directory Services. In this
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paper, we will discuss various models of directory services, the
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limitations of current models, and some solutions provided by the
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X.500 standard to these limitations.
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2 MODELS OF DIRECTORY SERVICES
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2.1 The telephone company's directory services.
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A model many people think of when they hear the words "Directory
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Services" is the directory service provided by the local telephone
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company. A local telephone company keeps an on-line list of the names
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of people with phone service, along with their phone numbers and
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their address. This information is available by calling up Directory
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Assistance, giving the name and address of the party whose number you
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are seeking, and waiting for the operator to search his database. It
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is additionally available by looking in a phone book published yearly
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on paper.
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The phone companies are able to offer this invaluable service because
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they administer the pool of phone numbers. However, this service has
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some limitations. For instance, you can find someone's number only if
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you know their name and the city or location in which they live. If
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two or more people have listings for the same name in the same
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locality, there is no additional information which with to select the
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correct number. In addition, the printed phone book can have
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information which is as much as a year out of date, and the phone
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company's internal directory can be as much as two weeks out of date.
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A third problem is that one actually has to call Directory assistance
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in a given area code to get information for that area; one cannot
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call a single number consistently.
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For businesses which advertise in the Yellow Pages, there is some
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additional information stored for each business; unfortunately, that
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information is unavailable through Directory Assistance and must be
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gleaned from the phone book.
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2.2 Some currently available directory services on the Internet.
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As the Internet is comprised of a vast conglomeration of different
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people, computers, and computer networks, with none of the hierarchy
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imposed by the phone system on the area codes and exchange prefixes,
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any directory service must be able to deal with the fact that the
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Internet is not structured; for example, the hosts foo.com and
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DISI Working Group [Page 2]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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v2.foo.com may be on opposite sides of the world, the .edu domain
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maps onto an enormous number of organizations, etc. Let's look at a
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few of the services currently available on the Internet for directory
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type services.
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2.2.1 The finger protocol.
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The finger protocol, which has been implemented for UNIX systems and
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a small number of other machines, allows one to "finger" a specific
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person or username to a host running the protocol. This is invoked by
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typing, for example, "finger clw@mazatzal.merit.edu". A certain set
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of information is returned, as this example from a UNIX system finger
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operation shows, although the output format is not specified by the
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protocol:
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Login name: clw In real life: Chris Weider
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Directory: /usr/clw Shell: /bin/csh
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On since Jul 25 09:43:42 4 hours 52 minutes Idle Time
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Plan:
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Home: 971-5581
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where the first three lines of information are taken from the UNIX
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operating systems information and the line(s) of information
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following the "Plan:" line are taken from a file named .plan which
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each user modifies. Limitations of the fingerd program include: a)
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One must already know which host to finger to find a specific person,
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b) since primarily UNIX machines run fingerd, people who reside on
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other types of operating systems are not locateable by this method,
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c) fingerd is often disabled on UNIX systems for security purposes,
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d) if one wishes to be found on more than one system, one must make
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sure that all the .plan files are consistent, and e) there is no way
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to search the .plan files on a given host to (for example) find
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everyone on mazatzal.merit.edu who works on X.500. Thus, fingerd has
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a limited usefulness as a piece of the Internet Directory.
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2.2.2 whois
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The whois utility, which is available on a wide of variety of
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systems, works by querying a centralized database maintained at the
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DDN NIC, which was for many years located at SRI International in
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Menlo Park, California, and is now located at GSI. This database
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contains a large amount of information which primarily deals with
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people and equipment which is used to build the Internet. SRI (and
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now GSI) has been able to collect the information in the WHOIS
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database as part of its role as the Network Information Center for
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the TCP/IP portion of the Internet.
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The whois utility is ubiquitous, and has a very simple interface. A
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DISI Working Group [Page 3]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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typical whois query look like:
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whois Reynolds
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and returns information like:
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Reynolds, John F. (JFR22) 532JFR@DOM1.NWAC.SEA06.NAVY.MIL
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(702) 426-2604 (DSN) 830-2604
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Reynolds, John J. (JJR40) amsel-lg-pl-a@MONMOUTH-EMH3.ARMY.MIL
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(908) 532-3817 (DSN) 992-3817
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Reynolds, John W. (JWR46) EAAV-AP@SEOUL-EMH1.ARMY.MIL
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(DSN) 723-3358
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Reynolds, Joseph T. (JTR10) JREYNOLDS@PAXRV-NES.NAVY.MIL
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011-63-47-885-3194 (DSN) 885-3194
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Reynolds, Joyce K. (JKR1) JKREY@ISI.EDU (213) 822-1511
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Reynolds, Keith (KR35) keithr@SCO.CO (408) 425-7222
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Reynolds, Kenneth (KR94) (502) 454-2950
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Reynolds, Kevin A. (KR39) REYNOLDS@DUGWAY-EMH1.ARMY.MIL
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(801) 831-5441 (DSN) 789-5441
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Reynolds, Lee B. (LBR9) reynolds@TECHNET.NM.ORG (505) 345-6555
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a further lookup on Joyce Reynolds with this command line:
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whois JKR1
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returns:
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Reynolds, Joyce K. (JKR1) JKREY@ISI.EDU
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University of Southern California
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Information Sciences Institute
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4676 Admiralty Way
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Marina del Rey, CA 90292
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(310) 822-1511
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Record last updated on 07-Jan-91.
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The whois database also contains information about Domain Name System
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(DNS) and has some information about hosts, major regional networks,
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and large parts of the MILNET system.
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The WHOIS database is large enough and comprehensive enough to
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exhibit many of the flaws of a large centralized database: a) As the
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database is maintained on one machine, a processor bottleneck forces
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slow response during times of peak querying activity, even if many of
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these queries are unrelated, b) as the database is maintained on one
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machine, a storage bottleneck forces the database administrators to
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severely limit the amount of information which can be kept on each
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entry in the database, c) all changes to the database have to be
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DISI Working Group [Page 4]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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mailed to a "hostmaster" and then physically reentered into the
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database, increasing both the turnaround time and the likelihood for
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a mistake in transcription.
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2.2.3 The Domain Name System
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The Domain Name System is used in the Internet to keep track of host
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to IP address mapping. The basic mechanism is that each domain, such
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as merit.edu or k-12.edu, is registered with the NIC, and at time of
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registration, a primary and (perhaps) some secondary nameservers are
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identified for that domain. Each of these nameservers must provide
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host name to IP address mapping for each host in the domain. Thus,
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the nameservice is supplied in a distributed fashion. It is also
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possible to split a domain into subdomains, with a different
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nameserver for each subdomain.
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Although in many cases one uses the DNS without being aware of it,
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because humans prefer to remember names and not IP addresses, it is
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possible to interactively query the DNS with the nslookup utility. A
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sample session using the nslookup utility:
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home.merit.edu(1): nslookup
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Default Server: merit.edu
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Address: 35.42.1.42
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> scanf.merit.edu
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Server: merit.edu
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Address: 35.42.1.42
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Name: scanf.merit.edu
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Address: 35.42.1.92
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> 35.42.1.92
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Server: merit.edu
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Address: 35.42.1.42
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Name: [35.42.1.92]
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Address: 35.42.1.92
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Thus, we can explicitly determine the address associated with a given
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host. Reverse name mapping is also possible with the DNS, as in this
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example:
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DISI Working Group [Page 5]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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home.merit.edu(2): traceroute ans.net
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traceroute to ans.net (147.225.1.2), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
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1 t3peer (35.1.1.33) 11 ms 5 ms 5 ms
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2 enss (35.1.1.1) 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms
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.................
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9 192.77.154.1 (192.77.154.1) 51 ms 43 ms 49 ms
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10 nis.ans.net (147.225.1.2) 53 ms 53 ms 46 ms
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At each hop of the traceroute, the program attempts to do a reverse
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lookup through the DNS and displays the results when successful.
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Although the DNS has served superlatively for the purpose it was
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developed, i.e. to allow maintenance of the namespace in a
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distributed fashion, and to provide very rapid lookups in the
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namespace, there are, of course, some limitations. Although there has
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been some discussion of including other types of information in the
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DNS, to find a given person at this time, assuming you know where she
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works, you have to use a combination of the DNS and finger to even
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make a stab at finding her. Also, the DNS has very limited search
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capabilities right now. The lack of search capabilities alone shows
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that we cannot provide a rich Directory Service through the DNS.
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3: THE X.500 MODEL OF DIRECTORY SERVICE
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X.500 is a CCITT protocol which is designed to build a distributed,
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global directory. It offers the following features:
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* Decentralized Maintenance:
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Each site running X.500 is responsible ONLY for its local part
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of the Directory, so updates and maintenance can be done instantly.
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* Powerful Searching Capabilities:
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X.500 provides powerful searching facilities that allow users to
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construct arbitrarily complex queries.
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* Single Global Namespace:
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Much like the DNS, X.500 provides a single homogeneous namespace
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to users. The X.500 namespace is more flexible and expandable
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than the DNS.
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* Structured Information Framework:
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X.500 defines the information framework used in the directory,
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allowing local extensions.
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DISI Working Group [Page 6]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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* Standards-Based Directory:
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As X.500 can be used to build a standards-based directory,
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applications which require directory information (e-mail,
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automated resource locators, special-purpose directory tools)
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can access a planet's worth of information in a uniform manner,
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no matter where they are based or currently running.
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3.1 Acronym City, or How X.500 Works
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The '88 version of the X.500 standard talks about 3 models required
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to build the X.500 Directory Service: the Directory Model, the
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Information Model, and the Security Model. In this section, we will
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provide a brief overview of the Directory and Information Models
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sufficient to explain the vast functionality of X.500.
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3.1.1 The Information Model
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To illustrate the Information Model, we will first show how
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information is held in the Directory, then we will show what types of
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information can be held in the Directory, and then we will see how
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the information is arranged so that we can retrieve the desired
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pieces from the Directory.
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3.1.1.1 Entries
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The primary construct holding information in the Directory is the
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"entry". Each Directory entry contains information about one object;
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for example, a person, a computer network, or an organization. Each
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entry is built from a collection of "attributes", each of which holds
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a single piece of information about the object. Some attributes which
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might be used to build an entry for a person would be "surname",
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"telephonenumber", "postaladdress", etc. Each attribute has an
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associated "attribute syntax", which describes the type of data that
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attribute contains, for example, photo data, a time code, or a string
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of letters and numbers. As an example, let's look at part of an entry
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for a person.
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Entry for John Smith contains:
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attribute ---> surName= Smith <--- attribute value
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|---> telephoneNumber= 999-9999 <--- attribute value
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|---> title= Janitor <--- attribute value
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...
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The attribute syntax for the surName attribute would be
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CaseIgnoreString, which would tell X.500 that surName could contain
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any string, and case would not matter; the attribute syntax for the
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telephoneNumber attribute would be TelephoneNumber, which would
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|||
|
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|||
|
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|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 7]
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|||
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|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
specify that telephoneNumber could contain a string composed of
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digits, dashes, parenthesis, and a plus sign. The attribute syntax
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for the title attribute would also be CaseIgnoreString. A good
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analogy in database terms for what we've seen so far might be to
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|||
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think of a Directory entry as a database record, an attribute as a
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|||
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field in that record, and an attribute syntax as a field type
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|||
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(decimal number, string) for a field in a record.
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|||
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|||
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3.1.1.2 Object Classes
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|||
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|
|||
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At this point in our description of the information model, we have no
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|||
|
way of knowing what type of object a given entry represents. X.500
|
|||
|
uses the concept of an "object class" to specify that information,
|
|||
|
and an attribute named "objectClass" which each entry contains to
|
|||
|
specify to which object class(es) the entry belongs.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Each object class in X.500 has a definition which lists the set of
|
|||
|
mandatory attributes, which must be present, and a set of optional
|
|||
|
attributes, which may be present, in an entry of that class. An given
|
|||
|
object class A may be a subclass of another class B, in which case
|
|||
|
object class A inherits all the mandatory and optional attributes of
|
|||
|
B in addition to its own.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The object classes in X.500 are arranged in a hierarchical manner
|
|||
|
according to class inheritance; the following diagram shows a part of
|
|||
|
the object class hierarchy.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 8]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
_____________
|
|||
|
| | "top" has one mandatory
|
|||
|
| top | attribute "objectClass",
|
|||
|
|_____________| and nooptional attributes.
|
|||
|
| | |
|
|||
|
| | | every other object class is a
|
|||
|
________________| | | subclass of "top"...
|
|||
|
| | ...
|
|||
|
______|________ _____|_______
|
|||
|
| | | |"organization" inherits one
|
|||
|
| country | | organization |mandatory attribute from
|
|||
|
|_______________| |_______________|"top", "objectClass"; adds one
|
|||
|
more mandatory attribute "O"
|
|||
|
"country" inherits one (for organization), and has
|
|||
|
mandatory attribute from "top", many optional attributes. Any
|
|||
|
"objectClass", adds one more subclass of "organization"
|
|||
|
mandatory attribute "c" (for would inherit all of the
|
|||
|
country), and has two optional mandatory and optional
|
|||
|
attributes, "description" and attributes from "organization"
|
|||
|
"searchGuide". Any subclass of including the attribute which
|
|||
|
"country" would inherit all of the "organization" inherited
|
|||
|
mandatory and optional attributes from "top".
|
|||
|
of the "country" class, including
|
|||
|
the attribute which "country"
|
|||
|
inherited from "top".
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Figure 1.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
One major benefit of the object class concept is that it is in many
|
|||
|
cases very easy to create a new object class which is only a slight
|
|||
|
modification or extension of a previous class. For example, if I have
|
|||
|
already defined an object class for "person" which contains a
|
|||
|
person's name, phone number, address, and fax number, I can easily
|
|||
|
define an "Internet person" object class by defining "Internet
|
|||
|
person" as a subclass of "person", with the additional optional
|
|||
|
attribute of "e-mail address". Thus in my definition of the "Internet
|
|||
|
Person" object class, all my "person" type attributes are inherited
|
|||
|
from "person". There are other benefits which are beyond the scope of
|
|||
|
this paper.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.1.1.3 X.500's namespace.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
X.500 hierarchically organizes the namespace in the Directory
|
|||
|
Information Base (DIB); recall that this hierarchical organization is
|
|||
|
called the Directory Information Tree (DIT). Each entry in the DIB
|
|||
|
occupies a certain location in the DIT. An entry which has no
|
|||
|
children is called a leaf entry, an entry which has children is
|
|||
|
called a non-leaf node. Each entry in the DIT contains one or more
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 9]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
attributes which together comprise the Relative Distinguished Name
|
|||
|
(RDN) of that entry, there is a "root" entry (which has no
|
|||
|
attributes, a special case) which forms the base node of the DIT. The
|
|||
|
Distinguished Name of a specific entry is the sequence of RDNs of the
|
|||
|
entries on the path from the root entry to the entry in question. A
|
|||
|
diagram here will help to clarify this:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Level of DIT Root RDN Distinguished Name
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
root * nothing { }
|
|||
|
/ | \
|
|||
|
country (other / | \
|
|||
|
things at this / | \ c=us {c=us}
|
|||
|
level) c=gb c=us c=ca
|
|||
|
/ | \
|
|||
|
/ | \
|
|||
|
/ | \
|
|||
|
organization o=SRI o=Merit o=DEC o=Merit {c=us, o=Merit}
|
|||
|
(other things / | \
|
|||
|
at this level) / | \
|
|||
|
/ | \
|
|||
|
Third level cn=Chris Weider cn=Chris Weider {c=us, o=Merit,
|
|||
|
cn=Chris Weider}
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Figure 2: Building a DN from RDNs (adapted from a
|
|||
|
diagram in the X.500 (88) Blue Book)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Each entry in this tree contains more attributes than have been shown
|
|||
|
here, but in each case only one attribute for each entry has been
|
|||
|
used for that entry's RDN. As noted above, any entry in the tree
|
|||
|
could use more than one attribute to build its RDN. X.500 also allows
|
|||
|
the use of alias names, so that the entry {c=us, o=Merit, cn=Chris
|
|||
|
Weider} could be also found through an alias entry such as {c=us,
|
|||
|
o=SRI, ou=FOX Project, cn=Drone 1} which would point to the first
|
|||
|
entry.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.1.2 The Directory Model
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Now that we've seen what kinds of information can be kept in the
|
|||
|
Directory, we should look at how the Directory stores this
|
|||
|
information and how a Directory users accesses the information. There
|
|||
|
are two components of this model: a Directory User Agent (DUA), which
|
|||
|
accesses the Directory on behalf of a user, and the Directory System
|
|||
|
Agent, which can be viewed as holding a particular subset of the DIB,
|
|||
|
and can also provide an access point to the Directory for a DUA.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Now, the entire DIB is distributed through the world-wide collection
|
|||
|
of DSAs which form the Directory, and the DSAs employ two techniques
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 10]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
to allow this distribution to be transparent to the user, called
|
|||
|
"chaining" and "referral". The details of these two techniques would
|
|||
|
take up another page, so it suffices to say that to each user, it
|
|||
|
appears that the entire global directory is on her desktop. (Of
|
|||
|
course, if the information requested is on the other side of the
|
|||
|
world, it may seem that the desktop directory is a bit slow for that
|
|||
|
request...)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.2 The functionality of X.500
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
To describe the functionality of X.500, we will need to separate
|
|||
|
three stages in the evolution of X.500: 1) the 1988 standard, 2)
|
|||
|
X.500 as implemented in QUIPU, and 3) the (proposed) 1992 standard.
|
|||
|
We will list some of the features described in the 1988 standard,
|
|||
|
show how they were implemented in QUIPU, and discuss where the 1992
|
|||
|
standard will take us. The QUIPU implementation was chosen because
|
|||
|
a) it is widely used in the U.S. and European Directory Services
|
|||
|
Pilot projects, and b) it works well. For a survey of other X.500
|
|||
|
implementations and a catalogue of DUAs, see [Lang].
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.2.1 Functionality in X.500 (88)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
There are a number of advantages that the X.500 Directory accrues
|
|||
|
simply by virtue of the fact that it is distributed, not limited to a
|
|||
|
single machine. Among these are:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* An enormously large potential namespace.
|
|||
|
Since the Directory is not limited to a single machine, many
|
|||
|
hundreds of machines can be used to store Directory entries.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* The ability to allow local administration of local data.
|
|||
|
An organization or group can run a local DSA to master their
|
|||
|
information, facilitating much more accurate data throughout
|
|||
|
the Directory.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The functionality built into the X.500(88) standard includes:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Advanced searching capabilities.
|
|||
|
The Directory supports arbitrarily complex searches at an
|
|||
|
attribute level. As the object classes a specific entry
|
|||
|
belongs to is maintained in the objectClass attribute, this
|
|||
|
also allows Directory searches for specific types of objects.
|
|||
|
Thus, one could search the c=US subtree for anyone with a last
|
|||
|
name beginning with S, who also has either a fax number in the
|
|||
|
(313) area code or an e-mail address ending in umich.edu.
|
|||
|
This feature of X.500 also helps to provide the basic
|
|||
|
functionality for a Yellow Pages service.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 11]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* A uniform namespace with local extensibility.
|
|||
|
The Directory provides a uniform namespace, but local
|
|||
|
specialized directories can also be implemented. Locally
|
|||
|
defined extensions can include new object classes, new
|
|||
|
attributes, and new attribute types.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Security issues.
|
|||
|
The X.500 (88) standards define two types of security for
|
|||
|
Directory data: Simple Authentication (which uses passwords),
|
|||
|
and Strong Authentication (which uses cryptographic keys).
|
|||
|
Simple authentication has been widely implemented, strong
|
|||
|
authentication has been less widely implemented. Each of
|
|||
|
these authentication techniques are invoked when a user or
|
|||
|
process attempts a Directory operation through a DUA.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In addition to the global benefits of the X.500 standard, there are
|
|||
|
many local benefits. One can use their local DSA for company or
|
|||
|
campus wide directory services; for example, the University of
|
|||
|
Michigan is providing all the campus directory services through
|
|||
|
X.500. The DUAs are available for a wide range of platforms,
|
|||
|
including X-Windows systems and Macintoshes.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.2.2 Functionality added by QUIPU.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Functionality beyond the X.500 (88) standard implemented by QUIPU
|
|||
|
includes:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Access control lists.
|
|||
|
An access control list is a way to provide security for each
|
|||
|
attribute of an entry. For example, each attribute in a given
|
|||
|
entry can be permitted for detect, compare, read, and modify
|
|||
|
permissions based on the reader's membership in various groups.
|
|||
|
For example, one can specify that some information in a given
|
|||
|
entry is public, some can be read only by members of the
|
|||
|
organization, and some can only be modified by the owner of
|
|||
|
the entry.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Replication.
|
|||
|
Replication provides a method whereby frequently accessed
|
|||
|
information in a DSA other than the local one can be kept by
|
|||
|
the local DSA on a "slave" basis, with updates of the "slave"
|
|||
|
data provided automatically by QUIPU from the "master" data
|
|||
|
residing on the foreign DSA. This provides alternate access
|
|||
|
points to that data, and can make searches and retrievals
|
|||
|
more rapid as there is much less overhead in the form or
|
|||
|
network transport.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 12]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.3 Current limitations of the X.500 standard and implementations.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
As flexible and forward looking as X.500 is, it certainly was not
|
|||
|
designed to solve everyone's needs for all time to come. X.500 is not
|
|||
|
a general purpose database, nor is it a Data Base Management System
|
|||
|
(DBMS). X.500 defines no standards for output formats, and it
|
|||
|
certainly doesn't have a report generation capability. The technical
|
|||
|
mechanisms are not yet in place for the Directory to contain
|
|||
|
information about itself, thus new attributes and new attribute types
|
|||
|
are rather slowly distributed (by hand).
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Searches can be slow, for two reasons: a) searches across a widely
|
|||
|
distributed portion of the namespace (c=US, for example) has a delay
|
|||
|
which is partially caused by network transmission times, and can be
|
|||
|
compounded by implementations that cache the partial search returns
|
|||
|
until everyone has reported back, and b) some implementations are
|
|||
|
slow at searching anyway, and this is very sensitive to such things
|
|||
|
as processor speed and available swap space. Another implementation
|
|||
|
"problem" is a tradeoff with security for the Directory: most
|
|||
|
implementations have an administrative limit on the amount of
|
|||
|
information which can be returned for a specific search. For
|
|||
|
example, if a search returns 1000 hits, 20 of those might be
|
|||
|
displayed, with the rest lost. Thus a person performing a large
|
|||
|
search might have to perform a number of small searches. This was
|
|||
|
implemented because an organization might want to make it hard to
|
|||
|
"troll" for the organization's entire database.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Also, there is at the moment no clear consensus on the ideal shape of
|
|||
|
the DIT, or on the idea structure of the object tree. This can make
|
|||
|
it hard to add to the current corpus of X.500 work, and the number of
|
|||
|
RFCs on various aspects of the X.500 deployment is growing monthly.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Despite this, however, X.500 is very good at what it was designed to
|
|||
|
do; i.e., to provide primary directory services and "resource
|
|||
|
location" for a wide band oftypes of information.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3.4 Things to be added in X.500 (92).
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The 1988 version of the X.500 standard proved to be quite sufficient
|
|||
|
to start building a Directory Service. However, many of the new
|
|||
|
functions implemented in QUIPU were necessary if the Directory were
|
|||
|
to function in a reasonable manner. X.500 (92) will include
|
|||
|
formalized and standardized versions of those advances, including
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* A formalized replication procedure.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Enhanced searching capacities.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 13]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
* Formalization of access control mechanisms, including access
|
|||
|
control lists.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Each of these will provide a richer Directory, but you don't have to
|
|||
|
wait for them! You can become part of the Directory today!
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
4: WHAT X.500 CAN DO FOR YOU TODAY
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
4.1 Current applications of X.500
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
X.500 is filling Directory Services needs in a large number of
|
|||
|
countries. As a directory to locate people, it is provided in the
|
|||
|
U.S. as the White Pages Pilot Project, run by PSI, and in Europe
|
|||
|
under the PARADISE Project as a series of nation-wide pilots. It is
|
|||
|
also being used by the FOX Project in the United States to provide
|
|||
|
WHOIS services for people and networks, and to provide directories of
|
|||
|
objects as disparate as NIC Profiles and a pilot K-12 Educators
|
|||
|
directory. It is also being investigated for its ability to provide
|
|||
|
resource location facilities and to provide source location for WAIS
|
|||
|
servers. In fact, in almost every area where one could imagine
|
|||
|
needing a directory service (particularly for distributed directory
|
|||
|
services), X.500 is either providing those services or being expanded
|
|||
|
to provide those services.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In particular, X.500 was envisioned by its creators as providing
|
|||
|
directory services for electronic mail, specifically for X.400. It is
|
|||
|
being used in this fashion today at the University of Michigan:
|
|||
|
everyone at the University has a unified mail address, e.g.
|
|||
|
Chris.Weider@umich.edu. An X.500 server then reroutes that mail to
|
|||
|
the appropriate user's real mail address in a transparent fashion.
|
|||
|
Similarly, Sprint is using X.500 to administrate the address space
|
|||
|
for its internal X.400 mail systems.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Those of us working on X.500 feel that X.500's strengths lie in
|
|||
|
providing directory services for people and objects, and for
|
|||
|
providing primary resource location for a large number of online
|
|||
|
services. We think that X.500 is a major component (though not the
|
|||
|
only one) of a global Yellow Pages service. We would also like to
|
|||
|
encourage each of you to join your national pilot projects; the more
|
|||
|
coverage we can get, the easier you will be able to find the people
|
|||
|
you need to contact.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
DISI Working Group [Page 14]
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
5. For Further Information
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
For further information, the authors recommend the following
|
|||
|
documents:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Weider, C., and J. Reynolds, "Executive Introduction to Directory
|
|||
|
Services Using the X.500 Protocol", FYI 13, RFC 1308, ANS, ISI,
|
|||
|
March 1992.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Lang, R., and R. Wright, Editors, "A Catalog of Available X.500
|
|||
|
Implementations", FYI 11, RFC 1292, SRI International, Lawrence
|
|||
|
Berkeley Laboratory, January 1992.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Barker, P., and S. Hardcastle-Kille, "The COSINE and Internet
|
|||
|
X.500 Schema", RFC 1274, University College London, November 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Hardcastle-Kille, S., "Replication Requirements to provide an
|
|||
|
Internet Directory using X.500", RFC 1275, University College
|
|||
|
London, November, 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Hardcastle-Kille, S., "Replication and Distributed Operations
|
|||
|
extensions to provide an Internet Directory using X.500", RFC
|
|||
|
1276, University College London, November 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Hardcastle-Kille, S., "Encoding Network Addresses to support
|
|||
|
operation over non-OSI lower layers", RFC 1277, University College
|
|||
|
London, November 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Hardcastle-Kille, S., " A string encoding of Presentation
|
|||
|
Address", RFC 1278, University College London, November 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Hardcastle-Kille, S., "X.500 and Domains", RFC 1279, University
|
|||
|
College London, November 1991.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
6. Security Considerations
|
|||
|
|
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Security issues are discussed in section 3.
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DISI Working Group [Page 15]
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RFC 1309 Technical Overview of X.500 March 1992
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7. Authors' Addresses
|
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|
|||
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Chris Weider
|
|||
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Advanced Network and Services, Inc.
|
|||
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2901 Hubbard G-1
|
|||
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Ann Arbor, MI 48105-2437
|
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|
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Phone (313) 663-2482
|
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E-mail: weider@ans.net
|
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|
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Joyce K. Reynolds
|
|||
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Information Sciences Institute
|
|||
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University of Southern California
|
|||
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4676 Admirality Way
|
|||
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Marina del Rey, CA 90292
|
|||
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|
|||
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Phone: (310) 822-1511
|
|||
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EMail: jkrey@isi.edu
|
|||
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|
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|
|||
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Sergio Heker
|
|||
|
JvNCnet
|
|||
|
Princeton University
|
|||
|
6 von Neumann Hall
|
|||
|
Princeton, NJ 08544
|
|||
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|
|||
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Phone: (609) 258-2400
|
|||
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Email: heker@nisc.jvnc.net
|
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DISI Working Group [Page 16]
|
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