Evolving of ASP.NET Identity System

ASP.NET Membership Provider

• First introduced in 2005
• Uses SQL Server database or Active Directory 
• See how to use ASP.NET membership provider

SqlMembershipProvider
Manages Membership information in a SQL Server database

ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider
Manages and store membership information in Active Directory.

LDAP  (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) : Is a protocol used to talk to AD (Difference between AD and LDAP)

Both providers above implements MembershipProvider class. Also see how to use AD and SQL providers together here and here.

ASP.NET Simple Membership

Membership system for ASP.NET Web Pages
Can't use with OWIN
Doesn't work well with existing ASP.NET membership providers

ASP.NET Universal Providers

Persist membership information on Windows Azure SQL Database
Can be used to persist data in any store built on Entity Framework
Built on ASP.NET membership infrastructure
http://www.asp.net/identity/overview/migrations/migrating-universal-provider-data-for-membership-and-user-profiles-to-aspnet-identity

ASP.NET Identity

One ASP.NET identity system
Unit testability
Ease of plugging in profile data about the user
Role provider and claim based
Social login providers
Windows Azure Active Directory
OWIN integration
NuGet package

DotNetOpenAuth
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dotnetopenauth

Resources
Windows Identity Foundation 
Introduction to Membership
Membership class
http://brockallen.com/2013/10/20/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-asp-net-identity/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21207246/asp-net-identity-vs-simple-membership-pros-and-cons
http://brockallen.com/2012/09/02/think-twice-about-using-membershipprovider-and-simplemembership/
http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway/simplemembership-membership-providers-universal-providers-and-the-new-asp-net-4-5-web-forms-and-asp-net-mvc-4-templates