Netscape Certificate Management System 6.2, Administrator'S Manual

Page: 783 / 874

What Is a Distinguished Name?
Appendix I Distinguished Names 783
Root Distinguished Name
The root distinguished name, or root DN, is the first, or top-most, entry in an LDAP
directory tree. In Netscape Directory Server, the root DN is commonly referred to
as the directory manager. By default, the root DN uses no suffix; it is simply a
common name attribute-data pair:
CN=Directory Manager
. For example, the root
entry’s DN could look like this:
CN=Directory Manager, O=Example
Corporation, C=US
.
Base Distinguished Name
The base distinguished name, or base DN, identifies the entry in the directory from
which searches initiated by LDAP clients occur; the base DN is often referred to as
the search base. For example, if you specify a base DN of
OU=people,
O=example.com
for a client, the LDAP search operation initiated by the client
examines only the
OU=people
subtree in the
O=example.com
directory tree.
L
Locality Identifies the place where the entry resides. The locality can be a
city, county, township, or other geographic region. For example:
• L=Mountain View
• L=Pacific Northwest
• L=Anoka County
ST
State or province
name Identifies the state or province in which the entry resides. For
example:
• ST=California
• ST=British Columbia
C
Country Identifies the name of the country under which the entry resides.
For example:
• C=US
• C=GB
DC
Domain component Identifies the domain components of a domain. For example, if the
domain is example.com, the domain components would be:
• dc=example, dc=com
Table I-1 Definitions of standard DN components (Continued)
Component Name Definition