INTERNET-DRAFT R. Hinden, Nokia May 18, 1999 B. Carpenter, IBM Preferred Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's 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 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 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 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet Draft will expire on November 18, 1999. 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 and Mozilla. draft-ietf-ipngwg-url-literal-00.txt [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT IPv6 Literal Addresses in URL's May 1999 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 and Mozilla. A Lynx implementation is underway. 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]. 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:417A 1080::8:800:200C:417A ::13.1.68.3 ::FFFF:129.144.52.38 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]:80/index.html http://[1080::8:800:200C:417A]:80/index.html http://[::13.1.68.3]:80/index.html http://[::FFFF:129.144.52.38]:80/index.html draft-ietf-ipngwg-url-literal-00.txt [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT IPv6 Literal Addresses in URL's May 1999 3. Security Considerations The use of this approach to represent literal IPv6 addresses in URL's does not introduce any known new security concerns. 4. IANA considerations None. 5. Authors' Addresses Robert M. Hinden phone: +1 650 625 2004 Nokia email: hinden@iprg.nokia.com 313 Fairchild Drive Mountain View, CA 94043 USA Brian E. Carpenter IBM email: brian@icair.org iCAIR, Suite 150 1890 Maple Avenue Evanston IL 60201 USA 6. References [ARCH] Hinden, R., S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC2372, 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. draft-ietf-ipngwg-url-literal-00.txt [Page 3]