IPv6 address/port format

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2000 at 09:47:46AM -0600, David Burgess wrote:

> Bill Sommerfeld wrote:

> > > "Dwayne C . Litzenberger" <dlitz@cheerful.com> said:
> > > > I'm not really knowledgeable about this, but what is a good, standard way
> > > > to show address/port shown in IPv4, IPv6, IPX, etc?  I would think
> > > > address.:port (dot-colon) would be good (and it already works with domain
> > > > names), but I haven't seen this done yet.
> > >
> > > > Any thoughts?

> > >   I've seen people use both "IPv6-addr port" (space sep.) and
> > > "IPv6-addr/port".  I think I really like using '/', and haven't yet
> > > found a place where that will cause problems except for in URIs.

> > It's too easily confused with network prefixes.. (IPv6-addr/prefixlen).

> > How am I supposed to know whether 3ffe:1ce1:0:b5::1/64 should be
> > parsed as an <address,port> pair or as a network prefix?


> The obvious answer is, of course, by context.  If I were to tell you to
> connect to 3ffe:1ce1:0:b5::1/64, then you would connect to service 64. 
> If I was talking about routing issues, then the 64 would be the prefix
> length.

	Bzzzt...  Wrong answer...

	Firewall rule:

	Deny access to 3ffe:1ce1:0:b5::1/96

	Are you saying to restrict the rule to port 96 on that host or are
you saying restrict the rule to any port on the /96 subnet.  It's ambigous
to attempt to parse it without knowledge of the data contents you are
attempting to parse and THAT'S unacceptable as a consequence.

	Overloading the '/' is going to be ambiguous in some contexts and
I see no way to avoid that.

	[...]

	Mike
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