connectionless lightweight directory access protocol (CLDAP)

The Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) is a connectionless LDAP protocol that was released in 1995. The CLDAP protocol was proposed as a standard, but never acquired standard status. Instead, it was reverted back to historical (Historic) status.

The CLDAP protocol was designed for applications that have limited information in the directories. As a lightweight protocol, the CLDAP protocol does not have the extensive connection establishment and sessionoverhead that connection-oriented DAP protocols require.

For various reasons, the CLDAP protocol has not been able to gain widespread acceptance on the Internet and has rarely been used. Among the reasons are the limited functionality, allowing only reading, and only small results. In addition, the protocol has unsatisfactory security mechanisms, no built-in protection, and does not provide confidentiality.

The CLDAP protocol is described in RFC 1798 and the CLDAPv2 version in RFC 1777.