Public example LDAP servers for beginners?

[Michael Ströder <michael.stroeder@inka.de>]

HI!

Wouldn't it be nice if there would be well-structured LDAP hosts
accessible for the public as examples for LDAP beginners?

When I started deploying LDAP I had two problems:
1. There was no easy-to-use LDAP client for browsing directories (that's
why I wrote http://web2ldap.de/).
2. There were no public LDAP hosts where I could learn how to set up a
well-structured directory. The well-known pre-configured LDAP hosts in
Netscape Communicator all suck.

Solutions:

1. I would like to invite users to use the on-line demo of web2ldap for
browsing arbitrary public LDAP hosts.

E.g. build an URL like this:

http://sites.inka.de/ms/cgi-bin/web2ldap.py?ldap_host=[host
address]&ldap_dn=[base DN]

[host address]	simply the DNS name or IP address of the server
[base DN]	URL-encoded base DN of the LDAP site

2. I would like to encourage all admins of public accessible LDAP hosts
to publish access information of their LDAP servers to be included in
the pre-configured select list.

Security issues (Disclaimer):
- If you have confidential data on your LDAP host and you are not sure
how 
  to protect it by ACLs don't publish information about your host.
- I am not logging passwords or any LDAP data transmitted through the 
  gateway. If you don't trust me simply don't use the on-line demo.
- I have also a SSL-enabled demo web site (with own certs):
  https://sites.inka.de:8000/cgi-bin/web2ldap.py

This is just a proposal...

Ciao, Michael.