IPv6 Network Administration

HTTP

HTTP can be delivered over IPv6 by a large array of web servers. We'll deal with the two most popular here: Apache (version 2) and IIS. We'll also cover some general issues that may arise when using an IPv6-enabled server.

It may be worth noting that IPv6 has slightly extended the format of URLs to allow IPv6 addresses: see the Section 8.4.3 in Chapter 8 for details.

Apache

Apache can be downloaded from http://httpd.apache.org/ and a precompiled version of Apache for Microsoft Windows can be found at http://win6.jp/Apache2/. Documentation for Apache can also be found on the Apache web site, including a section on installation in the reference manual. Apache 2 is the current release family, though Apache 1.3 is still in widespread use.

Although Apache 1.3 can support IPv6, we do not recommend you use it. Perhaps the most important reason is that Apache 2 is an inherently better platform on which to deploy web services anyway: the code quality, performance and scalability have improved dramatically since Apache 1.x. In more practical terms, the IPv6 patch for 1.x has a tendency to play nastily with other patches, which can be problematic for existing deployments.

While Apache 2 is the preferable option, some people may prefer to stick with Apache 1.3, because of policy or the availability of third-party/in-house modules. In cases like this there are two options. First, Apache 2 can be installed separately to support IPv6, and then hung off an IPv6-only address with minimal impact ...