RFC 2292 (rfc2292) - Page 1 of 67

Advanced Sockets API for IPv6

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Network Working Group                                        W. Stevens
Request for Comments: 2292                                   Consultant
Category: Informational                                       M. Thomas
                                                              AltaVista
                                                          February 1998



                     Advanced Sockets API for IPv6


Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   Specifications are in progress for changes to the sockets API to
   support IP version 6 [RFC-2133].  These changes are for TCP and UDP-
   based applications and will support most end-user applications in use
   today: Telnet and FTP clients and servers, HTTP clients and servers,
   and the like.

   But another class of applications exists that will also be run under
   IPv6.  We call these "advanced" applications and today this includes
   programs such as Ping, Traceroute, routing daemons, multicast routing
   daemons, router discovery daemons, and the like.  The API feature
   typically used by these programs that make them "advanced" is a raw
   socket to access ICMPv4, IGMPv4, or IPv4, along with some knowledge
   of the packet header formats used by these protocols.  To provide
   portability for applications that use raw sockets under IPv6, some
   standardization is needed for the advanced API features.

   There are other features of IPv6 that some applications will need to
   access: interface identification (specifying the outgoing interface
   and determining the incoming interface) and IPv6 extension headers
   that are not addressed in [RFC-2133]: Hop-by-Hop options, Destination
   options, and the Routing header (source routing).  This document
   provides API access to these features too.






Stevens & Thomas             Informational
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