2001/02/13

[RFC] Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6

 The de facto standard application program interface (API) for TCP/IP
 applications is the 'sockets' interface.  Although this API was
 ndeveloped for Unix in the early 1980s it has also been implemented on a
 wide variety of non-Unix systems.  TCP/IP applications written using the
 sockets API have in the past enjoyed a high degree of portability and we
 would like the same portability with IPv6 applications.  But changes are
 required to the sockets API to support IPv6 and this memo describes
 these changes.  These include a new socket address structure to carry
 IPv6 addresses, new address conversion functions, and some new socket
 options.  These extensions are designed to provide access to the basic
 IPv6 features required by TCP and UDP applications, including
 multicasting, while introducing a minimum of change into the system and
 providing complete compatibility for existing IPv4 applications.
 Additional extensions for advanced IPv6 features (raw sockets and access
 to the IPv6 extension headers) are defined in another document [4].

draft-ietf-ipngwg-rfc2553bis-03.txt