IPv4 and IPv6 overview

Beginning with Tivoli Access Manager for Web version 6.0, WebSEAL supports Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

IPv6 improves upon IPv4 in the following ways:

• IPv6 allocates 128 bits for the address space; IPv4 only allocates 32 bits for the address space.
• IPv6 can decrease the size of static, non-default routing tables, used to route packets through the Internet backbone.
• IPv6 provides end-to-end security by requiring adherence to the IP Security protocols (IPSec).

The primary format of an IPv4 address is a 32-bit numeric address that is written as four numbers that are separated by periods. For example:

x.x.x.x

The valid range for each number is zero to 255. For example:

1.160.10.240

One primary format of an IPv6 address is a 128-bit numeric address that is written as eight numbers that are separated by colons. For example:

x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x

The valid range for each number is zero to ffff (hexadecimal). For example:

fec0:fff:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:1

The IPv6 address can be expressed in an abbreviated form by collapsing the contiguous fields that contain only zeros. For example, 0009:0000:0000:0000:0000:0008:0007:0006 can be represented as 9::8:7:6.

Refer to the RFC 2373 standard to determine what constitutes a valid representation of an IPv6 address. ISAM supports any of the valid forms for an IPv6 address that is described in Section 2.2 of RFC 2373. IBM Security Verify Access does not support prefix notation for a netmask.

Parent topic: Web server configuration

Related concepts

• Content caching
• Communication protocol configuration
• IPv6: Compatibility support
• 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