What is the format of principals?
In Kerberos 4, a principal was divided into three parts: 1. The principal name 2. An optional instance 3. The Kerberos realm Kerberos 4 principals are written in the following format: name.instance-at-realm Kerberos 5 principals are written in a slightly different format: component/component/component-at-realm The terms “name” and “instance” are still used for the first and the second components respectively. Note that in both Kerberos 4 and Kerberos 5, the way that principals are encoded into strings have nothing to do with the way they are stored internally in Kerberos. There is an established convention as to how principals are named. Generally, you will encounter three different types of principals. 1. A principal without an instance. This is used for users, with the username being used as the principal name. Some examples: kenh-at-CMF.NRL.NAVY.MIL tytso-at-ATHENA.MIT.EDU 2. A principal with a hostname for an instance. This is used to distinguish between the same service on differe
