Editing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (section)

==Usage==
An LDAP server may return referrals to other servers for requests that it cannot fulfill itself. This requires a naming structure for LDAP entries so one can find a server holding a given distinguished name (DN), a concept defined in the X.500 Directory and also used in LDAP. Another way of locating LDAP servers for an organization is a DNS [[SRV record|server record]] (SRV).

An organization with the domain example.org may use the top level LDAP DN <code>dc=example, dc=org</code> (where ''dc'' means domain component).  If the LDAP server is also named ldap.example.org, the organization's top level LDAP URL becomes <code>ldap://ldap.example.org/dc=example,dc=org</code>.

Primarily two common styles of naming are used in both X.500 [2008] and LDAPv3. These are documented in the ITU specifications and IETF RFCs. The original form takes the top level object as the country object, such as <code>c=US</code>, <code>c=FR</code>. The domain component model uses the model described above. An example of country based naming could be <code>l=Locality, ou=Some Organizational Unit, o=Some Organization, c=FR</code>, or in the US: <code>cn=Common Name, l=Locality, ou=Some Organizational Unit, o=Some Organization, st=CA, c=US</code>.