INTERNET-DRAFT R. Hinden, Nokia
September 15, 1999 B. Carpenter, IBM
L. Masinter, Xerox
Preferred Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's
<draft-ietf-ipngwg-url-literal-03.txt>
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026 [STD-PROC].
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference
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The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
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This Internet Draft will expire on March 15, 2000.
Abstract
This document defines the preferred format for literal IPv6 Addresses
in URL's for implementation in World Wide Web browsers. This format
has been implemented in the IPv6 versions of several widely deployed
browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Lynx.
It is also intended to be used in the IPv6 version of the service
location protocol.
This document incudes an update to the generic syntax for Uniform
Resource Identifiers defined in RFC 2396 [URL]. It defines a syntax
for IPv6 addresses and allows the use of "[" within a URI explicitly
for this reserved purpose.
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1. Introduction
The textual representation defined for literal IPv6 addresses in
[ARCH] is not directly compatible with URL's. Both use ":" and "."
characters as delimiters. This document defines the preferred format
for literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's for implementation in World Wide
Web browsers. The goal is to have a format that allows easy "cut"
and "paste" operations with a minimum of editing of the literal
address.
The format defined in this document has been implemented in the IPv6
versions of several widely deployed browsers including Microsoft
Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Lynx. It is also intended to be used
in the IPv6 version of the service location protocol.
1.1 Requirements
The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD,
SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, if and where they appear
in this document, are to be interpreted as described in [KEYWORDS].
World Wide Web browsers SHOULD implement the format of IPv6 literals
in URL's defined in this document. Other types of applications and
protocols that use URL's MAY use this format.
2. Literal IPv6 Address Format in URL's Syntax
To use a literal IPv6 address in a URL, the literal address should be
enclosed in "[" and "]" characters. For example the following
literal IPv6 addresses:
FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210
1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:4171
3ffe:2a00:100:7031::1
1080::8:800:200C:417A
::192.9.5.5
::FFFF:129.144.52.38
2010:836B:4179::836B:4179
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would be represented as in the following example URLs:
http://[FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210]:80/index.html
http://[1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A]/index.html
http://[3ffe:2a00:100:7031::1]
http://[1080::8:800:200C:417A]/foo
http://[::192.9.5.5]/ipng
http://[::FFFF:129.144.52.38]:80/index.html
http://[2010:836B:4179::836B:4179]
3. Changes to RFC 2396
This document updates the generic syntax for Uniform Resource
Identifiers defined in RFC 2396 [URL]. It defines a syntax for IPv6
addresses and allows the use of "[" within a URI explicitly for this
reserved purpose.
The following changes to the syntax in RFC 2396 are made: change the
'host' non-terminal to add an IPv6 option:
host = hostname | IPv4address | IPv6reference
ipv6reference = "[" IPv6address "]"
where IPv6address is defined as in RFC2373. The definition of
'IPv4address' is also replaced with that of RFC 2373, as it correctly
defines an IPv4address as consisting of at most three decimal digits
per segment.
In addition, add "[" and "]" to the set of 'reserved' characters:
reserved = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" |
"$" | "," | "[" | "]"
and remove them from the 'unwise' set:
unwise = "{" | "}" | "|" | "\" | "^" | "`"
4. Security Considerations
The use of this approach to represent literal IPv6 addresses in URL's
does not introduce any known new security concerns.
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5. IANA considerations
None.
6. Authors' Addresses
Robert M. Hinden phone: +1 650 625 2004
Nokia email: hinden@iprg.nokia.com
313 Fairchild Drive web: http://www.iprg.nokia.com/~hinden
Mountain View, CA 94043
USA
Brian E. Carpenter
IBM email: brian@icair.org
iCAIR, Suite 150
1890 Maple Avenue
Evanston IL 60201
USA
Larry Masinter
Xerox Corporation email: masinter@parc.xerox.com
3333 Coyote Hill Road web: http://purl.org/NET/masinter
Palo Alto, CA 94034
7. References
[ARCH] Hinden, R., S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC2373, July, 1998.
[STD-PROC] Bradner, S., The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3,
RFC 2026, October 1996.
[URL] Fielding, R., L. Masinter, T. Berners-Lee, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers: Generic Syntax", RFC2396, August,
1998.
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