1.4 Relationship to Other Protocols

The Digest Authentication Protocol was originally specified as a native authentication method for HTTP/1.1, as specified in [RFC2616], to serve as an improvement on the HTTP basic authentication. The popularity of digest authentication grew, and it was covered as an SASL [RFC2222] mechanism by the specification in [RFC2831]. Once made into an SASL mechanism, the Digest Authentication Protocol became available for other protocols, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), as specified in [RFC2251].