We need to distinguish between:
If the Ocaml runtime detects that IPv6 is available on the OS, IPv6 will also be compiled into OCamlnet. The does not mean, however, that IPv6 is enabled at runtime, which should only be done if IPv6 traffic can be routed.
For Linux and BSD systems IPv6 is automatically enabled when a network
interface is detected with a global IPv6 address. This check is done
by Netsys.is_ipv6_system.
You can override what this function returns by calling
Netsys.set_ipv6_system. This is needed on other OS where the
automatic check does not work, and of course also when IPv6 needs to
be turned off.
Recognize IPv4 and IPv6 addresses with Netsys.is_ipv4_inet_addr and
Netsys.is_ipv6_inet_addr, respectively.
The Neturl module can parse URLs containing IPv6 addresses, e.g.
http://[fe80::224:7eff:fedf:59ff]/path. The address must be included
in square brackets, following common Internet standards. These square
brackets remain in place if the host part of the URL is extracted from
the URL with Neturl.url_host. Note that Unix.inet_addr_of_string
cannot process such brackets. Because of this, another function
Neturl.url_addr has been added which returns the IP address
directly.
For simple host/port pairs like localhost:3128 another abstraction
has been added, Netsockaddr. With
Netsockaddr.socksymbol_of_string one can parse such pairs, and IPv6
addresses are supported. Again, these addresses need to be enclosed in
square brackets.
Note that it is possible to map IPv4 addresses into the IPv6 address space.
Such addresses have the form ::ffff:XXXX:XXXX where XXXX:XXXX is the
IPv4 address. Such addresses are normally written ::ffff:x.y.z.u so
that the IPv4 address is denoted as the well-known dotted quadruple.
You get such addresses when a server socket is bound to :: and receives
IPv4 traffic. The consequence is that the same IPv4 address exists in
two forms, namely as native IPv4 address and as IPv4-mapped-to-IPv6 address.
Use Netsys.norm_inet_addr to normalize an address and
Netsys.ipv6_inet_addr to enforce the mapped form.
The protocol interpreters for HTTP, FTP, and SOCKS have been carefully reviewed, and the necessary changes have been done.
The implementations for SMTP, POP, and the web connectors do not contain IP addresses (or are uncritical).
Regarding SunRPC, the Portmapper protocol does not support IPv6. To cope with that, some support for RPCBIND, the successor of Portmapper, has been added. First the required RPCBIND requests are tried, and if it is detected that RPCBIND is unavailable, the old Portmapper requests are done instead. Note that in the latter case IPv6 is not possible.
The central name service module is Uq_resolver. The name resolver
is now pluggable, and there are two versions:
Uq_resolver.default_resolver bases on gethostbyname, and is
typically IPv4-only (but this is OS-dependent).Uq_resolver.gai_resolver bases on getaddrinfo, and supports
both IPv4 and IPv6. One can set which address types are enabled.
getaddrinfo may not be available on all platforms, but it always
available for platforms supporting IPv6.If Netsys.is_ipv6_system returns true, the standard resolver is
automatically changed to Uq_resolver.gai_resolver in order to allow
IPv6 name lookups.
