Address Book: LDAP

NOTE: the LDAP service has been blocked (as of the 10th of December 2020) to world-wide access, and may now only be used on the Physics network (which includes Physics VPN).

The LDAP service provides contact information for staff and students within the department. All modern email programs can be set up to search LDAP servers to obtain email addresses. Once set up in this way, a user only has to put in a part of the intended recipient's first name or last name in order to see a list of possible people.

We provide an authenticated service (physics.ox.ac.uk port 636) which requires that you provide login information for the connection. This has the great advantage that it will work from anywhere on the internet. Your client must support STARTTLS type encryption, which almost all do.

How to configure your email client to use LDAP

Each email client (program) is slightly different but the general approach is to find the part of the configuration which deals with address books. You will need to create an address book served by a remote server. If your email client supports multiple address books, you may be able to have your own 'local address book' as well as the LDAP one and to set the order in which various address books are searched. You may want to select configuration options like 'automatically check against server when sending emails'.

Authenticated LDAP Service

You will need the following parameters when configuring your client

Host address

(server)
physics.ox.ac.uk
Server Port 636
Search base

(searchDN)
OU=Physics,DC=physics,DC=ox,DC=ac,DC=uk
BindDN

(username, if present tick the `My server needs me to login` box)
<physics-username>@physics.ox.ac.uk
Use Secure connection (SSL) (ticked)

Anonymous LDAP Service

This is no longer available

Categories: Email | Services