Making Progress. Did a Google search and found that TLS was required by default using the default Bind User. (LDAP Result Code 8 "Strong Auth Required": BindSimple: Transport encryption required)
Turned off the strong encryption requirement as stated in the post using the entry in the [global] section of the smb.conf file “ldap server require strong auth = no”. sipXcom can now connect to the LDAP directory, so all I need to do now is map the objects listed from Nethserver’s directory.
This is turning out to be easier than I thought… Thanks so much.
–Steve