INTERNET-DRAFT Kurt D. Zeilenga
Intended Category: Informational OpenLDAP Foundation
Expires in six months 16 August 2002
LDAPv2 to Historic Status
<draft-zeilenga-ldapv2-03.txt>
Status of Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
This document is intended to be, after appropriate review and
revision, submitted to the RFC Editor as an Informational document.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Technical discussion of this
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<Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>.
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Copyright 2001, The Internet Society. All Rights Reserved.
Please see the Copyright section near the end of this document for
more information.
Abstract
This document recommends the retirement of version 2 of the
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAPv2) and dependent
specifications, and discusses the reasons for doing so. This document
recommends RFC 1777, 1778, 1779, 1781, and 2559 be moved to Historic
status.
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Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, version 2
LDAPv2 (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, version 2)
[RFC1777][RFC1778][RFC1779] is an Internet Protocol used to access
X.500-based directory services. This document recommends the LDAPv2
and dependent specifications be retired. Specifically, this document
recommends RFC 1777, 1778, 1779, 1781, and 2559 be moved to Historic
status. The reasons for taking this action are discussed below.
LDAPv2 was published in 1995 as a Draft Standard. Since its
publication, a number of inadequacies in the specification have been
discovered. LDAPv3 [RFC2251] was published in 1997 as a Proposed
Standard to resolve these inadequacies. While LDAPv3 is currently
being revised [LDAPbis], it is clearly technically superior to LDAPv2.
The LDAPv2 specification is not generally adhered to. That is, an
independently developed implementation of the specification would not
interoperate with existing implementations as existing implementations
use syntaxes and semantics different than those prescribed by the
specification. Below are two examples.
1) Existing LDAPv2 implementations do not commonly restrict textual
values to IA5 (ASCII) and T.61 (Teletex) as required by RFC 1777
and RFC 1778. Some existing implementations use ISO 8859-1,
others use UCS-2, others use UTF-8, and some use whatever the
local character set happens to be.
2) RFC 1777 requires use of the textual string associated with
AttributeType in the X.500 Directory standards. However,
existing implementations use the NAME associated with the
AttributeType in LDAPv3 schema [RFC2252]. That is, LDAPv2
requires the organization name attribute be named
"organizationName" not "o".
In addition, LDAPv2 does not provide adequate security features for
use on the Internet. LDAPv2 does not provide any mechanism for data
integrity or confidentiality. LDAPv2 does not support modern
authentication mechanisms such as those based on DIGEST-MD5, Kerberos
V, and X.509 public keys.
Dependent Specifications
Since the publication of RFC 1777, 1778, and 1779, there have been
additional standard track RFCs published which are dependent on these
technical specifications, including:
"Using the OSI Directory to Achieve User Friendly Naming" [RFC1781]
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and
"Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Operational Protocols -
LDAPv2" [RFC2559].
RFC 1781 is a technical specification for "User Friendly Naming" which
replies on particular syntaxes described in RFC 1779. RFC 2253, which
replaced RFC 1779, eliminated support for the "User Friendly Naming"
syntaxes. RFC 1781 is currently a Proposed Standard.
RFC 2559 is primarily an applicability statement for using LDAPv2 in
providing Public Key Infrastructure. It depends on RFC 1777 and
updates RFC 1778. If LDAPv2 is moved to Historic status, so must this
document. RFC 2559 is currently a Proposed Standard.
Security Considerations
LDAPv2 does not provide adequate security mechanisms for general use
on the Internet. LDAPv3 offers far superior security mechanisms
include support for strong authentication and data confidentiality
services. Moving LDAPv2 to Historic may improve the security of the
Internet by encouraging implementation and use of LDAPv3.
Recommendation
Developers should not implement LDAPv2 per RFC 1777 as such would
result in an implementation which will not interoperate with existing
LDAPv2 implementations. Developers should implement LDAPv3 instead.
Deployers should recognize that significant interoperability issues
exist between current LDAPv2 implementations. LDAPv3 is clearly
technically superior to LDAPv2 and hence should be used instead.
It is recommended that RFC 1777, RFC 1778, RFC 1779, RFC 1781, and RFC
2559 be moved to Historic status.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank the designers of LDAPv2 for their
contribution to the Internet community.
Author's Address
Kurt D. Zeilenga
OpenLDAP Foundation
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Email: Kurt@OpenLDAP.org
Normative References
[RFC1777] Yeong, W., Howes, T., and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol", RFC 1777, March 1995.
[RFC1778] T. Howes, S. Kille, W. Yeong, C. Robbins, "The String
Representation of Standard Attribute Syntaxes", RFC 1778,
March 1995.
[RFC1779] S. Kille, "A String Representation of Distinguished Names",
RFC 1779, March 1995.
[RFC1781] S. Kille, "Using the OSI Directory to Achieve User Friendly
Naming", RFC 1781, March 1995.
[RFC2559] Boeyen, S., Howes, T. and P. Richard, "Internet X.509 Public
Key Infrastructure Operational Protocols - LDAPv2", RFC
2559, April 1999.
Informative References
[LDAPbis] IETF LDAP Revision (v3) Working Group (LDAPbis),
<http://www.ietf.org/html-charters/ldapbis-charter.html>.
[RFC2251] Wahl, M., Howes, T. and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.
[RFC2252] M. Wahl, A. Coulbeck, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol (v3): Attribute Syntax
Definitions", RFC 2252, December 1997.
[RFC2253] M. Wahl, S. Kille, T. Howes, "Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (v3): UTF-8 String Representation of Distinguished
Names", RFC 2253, December 1997.
Copyright 2002, The Internet Society. All Rights Reserved.
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