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| | Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control |
 | | Access can be granted or denied based on a wide variety of criteria, such as the network address of the client, the time of day, the phase of the moon, or the browser which the visitor is using. |
 | | Access control is analogous to locking the gate at closing time, or only letting people onto the ride who are more than 48 inches tall - it's controlling entrance by some arbitrary condition which may or may not have anything to do with the attributes of the particular visitor. |
 | | And so every time a document is accessed which is secured with basic or digest authentication, Apache has to open up those text password files and look through them one line at a time, until it finds the user that is trying to log in, and verifies their password. |
| httpd.apache.org /docs/1.3/howto/auth.html (5326 words) |
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