RFC 2292 (rfc2292) - Page 1 of 67
Advanced Sockets API for IPv6
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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