3.5 Planning the WebDAV Authentication Method

3.5.1 Understanding WebDAV

WebDAV is a standard collaborative editing and file management protocol. Teaming relies on the WebDAV protocol to accomplish two key features:

IMPORTANT:Because of WebDAV limitations in Windows 7, when Teaming users are running Windows 7 as the client operating system, various issues can be introduced. If your Teaming users are using the Windows 7 operating system, see Configuring Teaming to Support WebDAV on Windows 7 in the Novell Teaming 3 Administration Guide.

3.5.2 Choosing the WebDAV Authentication Method

The WebDAV authentication method determines how user credentials are passed from Teaming to the WebDAV server. Teaming 3 and later supports three types of WebDAV authentication methods:

Choosing Basic Authentication

Basic authentication uses a one-way encryption algorithm known as asymmetric encryption. Select this type of authentication in any of the following situations:

  • When you plan to use Novell Access Manager (NAM) or Internet Information Services (IIS) to authenticate users

Choosing Digest Authentication

Digest authentication uses a reversible two-way encryption algorithm known as symmetric encryption. Select this type of authentication in any of the following situations:

  • When client users are using Windows 7 as their operating system and Microsoft Office as their text editor

    NOTE:Selecting this option requires user passwords to be stored in the Teaming database using a reversible two-way encryption algorithm known as symmetric encryption. For more information about selecting an algorithm, see Section 3.6.5, Database Encryption Algorithm.