RE: IPv6 support in WebDAV and HTTP

RFC2616 says: "http_URL = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [
"?" query ]]"

I can't find a definition of the host part.  It does however say "The
use of IP addresses in URLs SHOULD be avoided whenever possible (see RFC
1900 [24])."

So: 
 - Does the wording in RFC2616 require support for IPv6 for HTTP
servers? Or does it merely skirt the issue?
 - Does anybody have any idea how HTTP servers and clients handle IPv6
addresses in practice?

I assume RFC2518bis should update its references to RFC2396 to RFC2616,
which results in removing the restriction to IPv4 addresses only.

Lisa


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roy T. Fielding [mailto:fielding@apache.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 3:09 PM
> To: Lisa Dusseault
> Cc: w3c-dist-auth@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: IPv6 support in WebDAV and HTTP
> 
> > WebDAV (RFC2518) imports its URL scheme definition from HTTP 1.1
> > (RFC2396).  HTTP says:
> >
> >    "The host is a domain name of a network host, or its IPv4 address
as
> > a
> >    set of four decimal digit groups separated by ".".  Literal IPv6
> >    addresses are not supported."
> >
> >       hostport      = host [ ":" port ]
> >       host          = hostname | IPv4address
> >
> > Does that mean that WebDAV *cannot* support IPv6 addresses?  Until I
> > started looking into this, I naively assumed that WebDAV already did
> > support IPv6 addresses, or could easily.
> 
> If WebDAV imports by reference (not cut-n-paste), then its reference
> is updated by the RFCs that update 2396, one of which defines the
> literal IPv6 address.
> 
> ....Roy

Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2002 18:41:11 UTC