RE: Thinking differently about the site local problem (was: RE: site local addresses (was Re: Fw: Welcome to the InterNAT...))

["Brian Zill" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Jeroen,

The lack of IPv6 literal address support in the version of wininet.dll
that shipped with Windows XP was for reasons of engineering expediency,
and not any political policy decision.  To the best of my knowledge,
Microsoft hasn't said one way or another as to whether or not we plan to
support IPv6 literal addresses in URLs in future releases.

I do, however, also remember a discussion on one of the IPv6 mailing
lists about this, and it seemed that there were several members of the
IPv6 community at large who thought it was great that we weren't
currently supporting them.  Apparently there are those who think
hard-coding IP addresses (of any version) in URLs is a bad idea.
Perhaps this is the discussion you are remembering.

--Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeroen Massar [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 02 April, 2003 07:19
> To: 'Spencer Dawkins'; [e-mail]
> Cc: IPv6 Feedback Alias
> Subject: RE: Thinking differently about the site local 
> problem (was: RE: site local addresses (was Re: Fw: Welcome 
> to the InterNAT...)) 
> 
> 
> Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> 
> > Hi, Jeroen,
> > 
> > Are you talking about ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2732.txt 
> > (PS)?
> > 
> > My quick read of this RFC is that it says "don't use IPv6 literals 
> > without enclosing them in brackets", as in
> > 
> >       host          = hostname | IPv4address | IPv6reference
> >       ipv6reference = "[" IPv6address "]"
> > 
> > But that's not quite the same thing you said: "never use 
> IPv6 IP's in 
> > URL's".
> > 
> > If you're talking about another reference, could you provide it? A 
> > quick RFC search for "IPv6 URL" turned up only this RFC...
> 
> Yes, though I can't seem to google up any references. Except 
> for: 
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/administration
/ipv6/defa
ult.asp

"Q: How can I force IPv6 connections using my Web browser?" <SNIP> "For
applications other than Internet Explorer: Connect using a literal IPv6
address. URLs that use the format for literal IPv6 addresses described
in RFC 2732, "Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URLs," are not
supported by the version of Internet Explorer provided with Windows XP."

There was some discussion about this deprecation as the Techpreviews
(Win2k/NT4) did support literal url's. The XP version and up though
won't support it to overcome one major 'problem': website 'designers'
embedding IP's inside websites to 'speed things up' (go figure). And
there where a number of other reasons for deciding so. Unfortunatly I
can't find the messages which where sent to a mailinglist about this
discussion which also contained why they decided this. Note that
wininet.dll doesn't support it that's why IE doesn't either...

MS CC'd, they can best explain the rationale behind it.

Greets,
 Jeroen

PS: Is 'google' already an official english verb? :)