Subject: IPv6 raw address issue

From: Tom Limoncelli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 22:16:33 -0400

The discussion about having a .ipv6 notation for IPv6 addresses sort of
died down and I may regret bringing it up again but...

In summary, it boiled down to two issues:
1.  We need a format that is easy and fast to enter into browsers.
2.  We need a format that won't choke the current web crawlers.

I think #1 could be resolved if we consider this a browser issue.  I
know that if I type "fish" into Netscape, it will try www.fish.com. 
Could we submit code to the Mozilla folks so that if someone enters
something that is unmistakably a IPv6 address it gets converted to
http://1\:2\:3\:4\:5.6.7.8/ (or whatever the appropriate quoting would
be).

Issue #2 then becomes a matter of making sure that all web crawlers
understand the quoting mechanism used in the paragraph above.

Just some thoughts as I sit here worrying about the Yankees about to
lose,
--tal

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From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:11:51 +1000

Date:        Tue, 20 Oct 1998 22:16:33 -0400
    From:        Tom Limoncelli <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | In summary, it boiled down to two issues:
  | 1.  We need a format that is easy and fast to enter into browsers.

No, we (apparently) need a form which can be entered into browsers, it
should not be either easy or fast - we want to discourage use of
literal IPv6 addresses, not encourage it.    Ideally this ought be
the kind of thing that is so painful that you would only ever use it
maybe once if it is your DNS server you need to contact, and it is
broken (so you can't use its name) or when your net is so screwed
that you have to get to a router withoug which you can't get to your
DNS servers.

  | 2.  We need a format that won't choke the current web crawlers.

No, we don't need that either.   Web crawlers should *never* see a
literal IPv6 address, those things should only ever be used in URLs
if they are entered by a human, part of IPv6 is that addresses are
expected to change, at least moderately frequently.   We must not
have addresses buried anyplace where they won't automatically be
updated.

kre

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From: Lars-Johan Liman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:13:31 +0200

[email-masked]:
> No, we (apparently) need a form which can be entered into browsers,

I would like to add that whatever you enter into your browser need not
be the actual string that the browser finally uses to access the
data. We have computers and applications to do the hairy work of
converting from easy-for-humans to the stringent-for-computers
format. Whatever goes into the DNS should be stringent. Whatever is
presented to humans should be easy for humans to handle. The interface
inbetween is called an application.

				Best regards,
				  /Lars-Johan Liman
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# What the DNS really needs, is CLUE records ... ;-)
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Lars-Johan Liman			 ! Internet: [email-masked]
# Ebone/NORDUnet/SUNET Operations Centre ! HTTP    : //www.sunet.se/~liman
# Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden	 ! Voice   : Int +46 8 - 790 65 60
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:57:09 -0400

From:  Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
To:  Tom Limoncelli <[email-masked]>
Cc:  [email-masked]
In-Reply-To:  Your message of "Tue, 20 Oct 1998 22:16:33 -0400."
	                  <[email-masked]> 
Date:  Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:11:51 +1000
Message-Id:  <[email-masked]>

>that you have to get to a router withoug which you can't get to your

As I've mentioned before, by far the most common time I use numeric IP
addresses is in tracking down spam, not when DNS is broken.

> ...

Thanks,
Donald

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From: Alan Barrett <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 18:10:53 +0200 (SAST)

> literal IPv6 addresses, not encourage it.

The folk who raised this issue certainly want a format that's easy to
enter.  But I think that a format that's difficult to enter would be OK,
because these things should be used so seldom.

My proposal is still this:

	http://%5BIPv6%20abcd%3A1234%3A%3A10.9.8.7%5D/

which is a %hex encoded version of this:

	http://[IPv6 abcd:1234::10.9.8.7]/

which contains an "address literal" in the square-brackets format that
draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-08 says should be used in email addresses.

> have addresses buried anyplace where they won't automatically be

Like it or not, people will put links with "click here to use the IP
address if the DNS is broken", or "... because my ISP refuses to set up
DNS for me", and web crawlers will see those links.   We shouldn't break
the web crawlers.

--apb (Alan Barrett)

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 07:07:07 +1000

Date:        Thu, 22 Oct 1998 18:10:53 +0200 (SAST)
    From:        Alan Barrett <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Like it or not, people will put links with "click here to use the IP
  | address if the DNS is broken", or "... because my ISP refuses to set up
  | DNS for me", and web crawlers will see those links.   We shouldn't break
  | the web crawlers.

What I'd like would be if the IPv6 literal address syntax for URLs
were actually impossible to use in HTML (that is, used some syntax such
that it could not be embedded in HTML - like an unescaped '>' or something).

That should be something that should not give too many problems to something
parsing a URL once it has already determined that a URL exists, and has the
full extent of the thing (like in a "open this URL" popup window or field,
or a command line, or similar, but which if embedded in HTML text would simply
produce utter gibberish (HTML syntax errors).

That would be the idea solution.    It is vital for IPv6 to be able to work
properly that literal addresses not be able to be embedded anywhere they don't
belong (which is basically the DNS and maybe router configurations).
Everyone and everything else should be obtaining their addresses from one of
those sources - with just the escape left for a human to obtain an address
and use it immediately in order to fix one of those things which is broken.

kre

ps: I also find it hard to care much about a web crawler which would "break"
if it happened to encounter a URL that it couldn't cope with.  Break as in
fail in mysterious ways, as opposed to simply ignoring the trash.    It is 
trivially easy for anyone to create web pages with all kinds of broken HTML
and URLs in them.   IPv6 isn't needed for that...

---

From: Alan Barrett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:43:19 +0200 (SAST)

> addresses is in tracking down spam, not when DNS is broken.

You could easily write a simple tool that took an IPv6 address in your
personal preferred format, converted the address to whatever ugly format
your web browser wants, and launched your web browser.  A minimal version
of such a tool could probably be written in less than 5 lines of perl or
shell+sed.

--apb (Alan Barrett)

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From: [email-masked] (Claus André Färber)
Date: 23 Oct 1998 13:16:00 +0200

> 	http://[IPv6 abcd:1234::10.9.8.7]/

You can't expect this to work in practice. Users are expected to _enter_  
URIs. Your proposed solution is ugly, clumsy, and counter-intuitive.

IMO, the best solution is to use the IPv6 address directly. A IPv4:port  
address and a IPv6 address can be distinguished easily by counting the  
colons: IPv4[:port] has one or less, IPv6 has at least two.

The problem is that you can't distinguish IPv6:port from IPv6 (no port),  
if the address is compressed.

Solutions:

* make the port (or at least the colon) mandatory (i.e. part of the
  address) as in <http://::1:/>, which means address "::1", port "",
  i.e. IPv6 address "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1", port "80" (http scheme default).

* use another delimiter, such as ",".

* use a (maybe optional without port) suffix on IPv6 addresse, such as
  in <http://::1.ip6:8080/>

* disallow compressed IPv6 addresses.

> DNS for me", and web crawlers will see those links.

Will they if there isn't a way to write IPv6 addresses in URIs?

-- 
Claus Andre Faerber <http://www.muc.de/~cfaerber/> Fax: +49_8061_3361
PGP: ID=1024/527CADCD FP=12 20 49 F3 E1 04 9E 9E  25 56 69 A5 C6 A0 C9 DC

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From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:20:23 -0500

> of such a tool could probably be written in less than 5 lines of perl or

No, no.  Build a *general* tool -- one which takes a string from the
{primary selection, clipboard} and munges it, replacing the {choose one}
with the uglified string.

---

From: Lars-Johan Liman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:13:31 +0200

Best regards,
				  /Lars-Johan Liman

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From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 23:58:44 -0400

It's still going to be a lot harder than cut and paste.

Donald

From:  Alan Barrett <[email-masked]>
Date:  Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:43:19 +0200 (SAST)
To:  [email-masked]
In-Reply-To:  <[email-masked]>
Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>