ipv6, PF_INET6 — Linux IPv6 protocol implementation
#include <sys/socket.h> #include <netinet/in.h>
tcp6_socket = socket( |
PF_INET6, | |
SOCK_STREAM, | ||
0) ; |
raw6_socket = socket( |
PF_INET6, | |
SOCK_RAW, | ||
protocol) ; |
udp6_socket = socket( |
PF_INET6, | |
SOCK_DGRAM, | ||
protocol) ; |
Linux 2.2 optionally implements the Internet Protocol, version 6. This man page contains a description of the IPv6 basic API as implemented by the Linux kernel and glibc 2.1. The interface is based on the BSD sockets interface; see socket(7).
The IPv6 API aims to be mostly compatible with the ip(7) v4 API. Only differences are described in this man page.
To bind an AF_INET6
socket
to any process the local address should be copied from the
in6addr_any
variable which has in6_addr
type. In static
initializations IN6ADDR_ANY_INIT
may also be used, which
expands to a constant expression. Both of them are in network
order.
The IPv6 loopback address (::1) is available in the global
in6addr_loopback
variable. For initializations IN6ADDR_LOOPBACK_INIT
should be used.
IPv4 connections can be handled with the v6 API by using the v4-mapped-on-v6 address type; thus a program only needs only to support this API type to support both protocols. This is handled transparently by the address handling functions in libc.
IPv4 and IPv6 share the local port space. When you get an IPv4 connection or packet to a IPv6 socket its source address will be mapped to v6 and it will be mapped to v6.
struct sockaddr_in6 { uint16_t sin6_family
; /* AF_INET6 */uint16_t sin6_port
; /* port number */uint32_t sin6_flowinfo
; /* IPv6 flow information */struct in6_addr sin6_addr
; /* IPv6 address */uint32_t sin6_scope_id
; /* Scope ID (new in 2.4) */}; struct in6_addr { unsigned char s6_addr
[16]; /* IPv6 address */};
sin6_family
is
always set to AF_INET6
;
sin6_port
is the
protocol port (see sin_port
in ip(7)); sin6_flowinfo
is the IPv6
flow identifier; sin6_addr
is the 128-bit IPv6
address. sin6_scope_id
is an ID of
depending of on the scope of the address. It is new in
Linux 2.4. Linux only supports it for link scope addresses,
in that case sin6_scope_id
contains the
interface index (see netdevice(7))
IPv6 supports several address types: unicast to address a single host, multicast to address a group of hosts, anycast to address the nearest member of a group of hosts (not implemented in Linux), IPv4-on-IPv6 to address a IPv4 host, and other reserved address types.
The address notation for IPv6 is a group of 16 2 digit hexadecimal numbers, separated with a ':'. '::' stands for a string of 0 bits. Special addresses are ::1 for loopback and ::FFFF:<IPv4 address> for IPv4-mapped-on-IPv6.
The port space of IPv6 is shared with IPv4.
IPv6 supports some protocol-specific socket options that
can be set with setsockopt(2) and read
with getsockopt(2). The socket
option level for IPv6 is IPPROTO_IPV6
. A boolean integer flag is
zero when it is false, otherwise true.
IPV6_ADDRFORM
Turn an AF_INET6
socket into a socket of a different address family.
Only AF_INET
is
currently supported for that. It is only allowed for
IPv6 sockets that are connected and bound to a
v4-mapped-on-v6 address. The argument is a pointer to
an integer containing AF_INET
. This is useful to pass
v4-mapped sockets as file descriptors to programs
that don't know how to deal with the IPv6 API.
Control membership in multicast groups. Argument is a pointer to a struct ipv6_mreq structure.
IPV6_MTU
Set the MTU to be used for the socket. The MTU is limited by the device MTU or the path mtu when path mtu discovery is enabled. Argument is a pointer to integer.
IPV6_MTU_DISCOVER
Control path mtu discovery on the socket. See
IP_MTU_DISCOVER
in
ip(7) for
details.
IPV6_MULTICAST_HOPS
Set the multicast hop limit for the socket. Argument is a pointer to an integer. −1 in the value means use the route default, otherwise it should be between 0 and 255.
IPV6_MULTICAST_IF
Set the device for outgoing multicast packets on
the socket. This is only allowed for SOCK_DGRAM
and
SOCK_RAW
socket. The argument is a pointer to an interface
index (see netdevice(7)) in an
integer.
IPV6_MULTICAST_LOOP
Control whether the socket sees multicast packets that it has send itself. Argument is a pointer to boolean.
IPV6_PKTINFO
Set delivery of the IPV6_PKTINFO
control message on
incoming datagrams. Only allowed for SOCK_DGRAM
or
SOCK_RAW
sockets. Argument is a pointer to a boolean value in
an integer.
Set delivery of control messages for incoming
datagrams containing extension headers from the
received packet. IPV6_RTHDR
delivers the routing
header, IPV6_AUTHHDR
delivers the authentication header, IPV6_DSTOPTS
delivers the
destination options, IPV6_HOPOPTS
delivers the hop
options, IPV6_FLOWINFO
delivers an integer containing the flow ID,
IPV6_HOPLIMIT
delivers
an integer containing the hop count of the packet.
The control messages have the same type as the socket
option. All these header options can also be set for
outgoing packets by putting the appropriate control
message into the control buffer of sendmsg(2). Only
allowed for SOCK_DGRAM
or
SOCK_RAW
sockets. Argument is a pointer to a boolean
value.
IPV6_RECVERR
Control receiving of asynchronous error options.
See IP_RECVERR
in
ip(7) for details.
Argument is a pointer to boolean.
IPV6_ROUTER_ALERT
Pass forwarded packets containing a router alert hop-by-hop option to this socket. Only allowed for SOCK_RAW sockets. The tapped packets are not forwarded by the kernel, it is the user's responsibility to send them out again. Argument is a pointer to an integer. A positive integer indicates a router alert option value to intercept. Packets carrying a router alert option with a value field containing this integer will be delivered to the socket. A negative integer disables delivery of packets with router alert options to this socket.
IPV6_UNICAST_HOPS
Set the unicast hop limit for the socket. Argument is a pointer to an integer. −1 in the value means use the route default, otherwise it should be between 0 and 255.
The older libinet6
libc5 based IPv6 API
implementation for Linux is not described here and may vary
in details.
Linux 2.4 will break binary compatibility for the
sockaddr_in6
for
64-bit hosts by changing the alignment of in6_addr
and adding an
additional sin6_scope_id
field. The kernel
interfaces stay compatible, but a program including
sockaddr_in6
or
in6_addr
into other
structures may not be. This is not a problem for 32-bit hosts
like i386.
The sin6_flowinfo
field is new in Linux 2.4. It is transparently passed/read by
the kernel when the passed address length contains it. Some
programs that pass a longer address buffer and then check the
outgoing address length may break.
The sockaddr_in6
structure is bigger than the generic sockaddr
. Programs that
assume that all address types can be stored safely in a
struct sockaddr need
to be changed to use struct
sockaddr_storage for that instead.
The IPv6 extended API as in RFC 2292 is currently only partly implemented; although the 2.2 kernel has near complete support for receiving options, the macros for generating IPv6 options are missing in glibc 2.1.
IPSec support for EH and AH headers is missing.
Flow label management is not complete and not documented here.
This man page is not complete.
RFC 2553: IPv6 BASIC API. Linux tries to be compliant to this.
RFC 2460: IPv6 specification.
This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages
project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting
bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
This man page is Copyright (C) 2000 Andi Kleen <akmuc.de>. Permission is granted to distribute possibly modified copies of this page provided the header is included verbatim, and in case of nontrivial modification author and date of the modification is added to the header. $Id: ipv6.7,v 1.3 2000/12/20 18:10:31 ak Exp $ |