Representing IPv6 Zone Identifiers in Address Literals and Uniform Resource Identifiers
RFC 6874
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(February 2013; Errata)
Updates RFC 3986
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Replaces | draft-carpenter-6man-uri-zoneid | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
Document shepherd | Ole Trøan | ||
Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2012-10-10) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6874 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Brian Haberman | ||
IESG note | Ole Troan is the document shepherd. | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) B. Carpenter Request for Comments: 6874 Univ. of Auckland Updates: 3986 S. Cheshire Category: Standards Track Apple Inc. ISSN: 2070-1721 R. Hinden Check Point February 2013 Representing IPv6 Zone Identifiers in Address Literals and Uniform Resource Identifiers Abstract This document describes how the zone identifier of an IPv6 scoped address, defined as <zone_id> in the IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture (RFC 4007), can be represented in a literal IPv6 address and in a Uniform Resource Identifier that includes such a literal address. It updates the URI Generic Syntax specification (RFC 3986) accordingly. Status of This Memo This is an Internet Standards Track document. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6874. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Carpenter, et al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 6874 IPv6 Zone IDs in URIs February 2013 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Web Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Appendix A. Options Considered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1. Introduction The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) syntax specification [RFC3986] defined how a literal IPv6 address can be represented in the "host" part of a URI. Two months later, the IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture specification [RFC4007] extended the text representation of limited-scope IPv6 addresses such that a zone identifier may be concatenated to a literal address, for purposes described in that specification. Zone identifiers are especially useful in contexts in which literal addresses are typically used, for example, during fault diagnosis, when it may be essential to specify which interface is used for sending to a link-local address. It should be noted that zone identifiers have purely local meaning within the node in which they are defined, often being the same as IPv6 interface names. They are completely meaningless for any other node. Today, they are meaningful only when attached to addresses with less than global scope, but it is possible that other uses might be defined in the future. The IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture specification [RFC4007] does not specify how zone identifiers are to be represented in URIs. Practical experience has shown that this feature is useful, in particular when using a web browser for debugging with link-local addresses, but because it is undefined, it is not implemented consistently in URI parsers or in browsers. Some versions of some browsers directly accept the IPv6 Scoped Address syntax [RFC4007] for scoped IPv6 addresses embedded in URIs, i.e., they have been coded to interpret a "%" sign following the literal address as introducing a zone identifier [RFC4007], instead of introducing two hexadecimal characters representing some percent- encoded octet [RFC3986]. Clearly, interpreting the "%" sign as introducing a zone identifier is very convenient for users, althoughShow full document text