Uses for LDAP

Several Netscape applications, including Netscape Roaming Access are LDAP-enabled. Sendmail can use LDAP to look up addresses. Your organization can use LDAP as an organization-wide directory and/or name service (in place of NIS or flat files). You can even use a personal LDAP server to keep track of your own e-mail address book (see the section called LDAP Resources on the Web).

LDAP can be used as an authentication service via the pam_ldap module. LDAP is commonly used as a central authentication server so that users have a unified login that covers console logins, POP servers, IMAP servers, machines connected to the network using Samba, and even Windows NT machines. All of these login situations can rely on the same user ID and password combination, using LDAP. The pam_ldap module is provided in the nss_ldap package.