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Part I: Active Directory Overview 2.0 Active Directory Tutorial Unfortunately, many aspects of AD are technically complex and most of the terms used to describe this suite of technologies are new. As a result, this tutorial is complicated but necessary to comprehend the design process. 2.1 Directory Services What is a directory in computing terms? A classic analogy is the white and yellow pages of a telephone book. A common feature of both white and yellow pages is the ability to search for information; the difference in the two is the way they are indexed. Publishing information in a directory and allowing users, applications, and systems administrators to make use of this information is the fundamental advantage of a Directory. Directories, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory (AD) are types of databases that can be searched to provide useful network information. A user can find network information without any knowledge of the structure of the network. For example, the user can search the Active Directory for a share, requiring no knowledge of the network. This is because the directory has abstracted a server's share to a directory share. Without Directory Services, a user has to know the server name and its share name to mount a network file share. AD changes this. Searching is a fundamental service provided by LDAP, so the more information "published" in the directory, the more productive the user community becomes. LDAP is a standard and the Active Directory is LDAP compliant. Since AD adheres to the LDAP standard, third party applications are leveraging the directory. AD-aware applications can use Windows 2000 services for authentication and access controls. These applications can store configuration information in the directory. For example, consider Microsoft's firewall Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) as an LDAP aware application. When ISA is used as an Intranet Proxy and cache server, the security policy for each proxy server is published in the