About the LDAP server referrals feature
Some LDAP servers use a special feature called referrals. A referral is an entity that contains the names and locations of other objects. A referral redirects a client request to another server. The server sends the referral to indicate that the information that the client has requested can be found at another location (or locations), possibly at another server or several servers.
If Application Security requests an LDAP object and this object is a referral, Application Security must request additional information about the LDAP object from another server, the address of which is returned in the REF object attribute. These additional requests can decrease LDAP communication speed. Even if the LDAP server does not use the referrals feature, additional operations that support referrals are performed.
If referrals are not used on your LDAP server, OpenText recommends that you disable referrals support in the LDAP library. Disabling this option on the Application Security server side makes Application Security‑to‑LDAP communication much faster. For instructions, see Disabling LDAP referrals support.
For a complete description of referrals, go to Referrals in the LDAP in the Oracle documentation.