Networks - LDAP | Information Systems & Services

LDAP - Light Directory Access Protocol

DCU ISS department maintain a directory which contains an entry for each DCU staff member or student. LDAP (Light Directory Access Protocol) is the application which manages the updating and querying of this directory.

Each person's entry contains a login username and password, and also holds information such as what department/course they belong to, what objects (such as network drives, folders, printers etc) they have access to, etc.

Access to most of DCU's computer resources and servers is controlled by this LDAP directory. For example, when a person logs onto the DCU network, or makes a connection to a server such as staff.dcu.ie or student.dcu.ie, the login username and password they supply is authenticated to the central directory using LDAP.

This provides a single point of sign-on for the majority of ISS services. There is no need to maintain separate passwords for different servers.