IPv6: Compatibility support

Before we enable IPv6 support, we must understand how IP version compatibility is maintained for previous versions of ISAM.

• If the ipv6-support is set to no, then WebSEAL provides support for IPv4 as it did in previous releases, but does not support IPv6.

  For example, the iv-remote-address-ipv6 HTTP header and XAUTHN_IPADDR_IPV6 identifier, used with the external authentication C API are not available. For more information, see the Reference topics in the IBM Knowledge Center.

• If ipv6-support is set to yes, IPv6 is supported. Attributes containing IPv4 addresses continue to hold IPv4 addresses. Custom modules that are written for previous releases still continue to work.

  However, if WebSEAL passes an IPv6-only address to an older custom module that is not written to support IPv6 format, the older module might require updating to handle the IPv6 address format.

  The address range for IPv6 is larger than the range available to IPv4. With older modules, WebSEAL maps an IPv6 address to an IPv4 format when possible. For example, the IPv6 address ::c0a8:1 maps to the IPv4 address 192.168.0.1.

  If the IPv6 address exceeds the range for IPv4, WebSEAL maps the address by default to 0.0.0.0 in IPv4 format. For example, the IPv6 address fec0::1 has no IPv4 equivalent and therefore is mapped to the IPv4 address 0.0.0.0.

Parent topic: Web server configuration

Related concepts

• Content caching
• Communication protocol configuration
• IPv4 and IPv6 overview
• IP levels for credential attributes
• LDAP directory server configuration
• WebSEAL worker thread configuration
• WebSEAL worker threads
• Global allocation of worker threads for junctions
• Per-junction allocation of worker threads for junctions
• HTTP data compression
• WebSEAL data handling by using UTF-8
• UTF-8 dependency on user registry configuration
• UTF-8 data conversion issues
• UTF-8 impact on authentication
• UTF-8 impact on authorization (dynamic URL)
• Encoding type usage
• UTF-8 support for uniform resource locators
• UTF-8 support in POST body information (forms)
• UTF-8 support in query strings
• UTF-8 encoding of tokens for cross domain single signon
• UTF-8 encoding of tokens for e-community single signon
• UTF-8 encoding of cookies for failover authentication
• UTF-8 encoding of cookies for LTPA authentication
• UTF-8 encoding in junction requests
• Validation of character encoding in request data
• Set system environment variables
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) Support

Related tasks

• Specify the WebSEAL host name
• Modify the configuration file settings
• Configure WebSEAL for IPv6 and IPv4 requests

Related reference

• IPv6: Upgrade notes
• Allocation view of worker threads for junctions
• Supported wildcard pattern matching characters