Subject: Protocol Action: Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:53:22 -0400

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'Format for Literal
IPv6 Addresses in URL's' <draft-ietf-ipngwg-url-literal-04.txt> as a
Proposed Standard.  This document is the product of the IPNG Working
Group.  

The IESG contact persons are Erik Nordmark and Thomas Narten.

Technical Summary
 
This document defines the preferred format for literal IPv6 Addresses
in URL's for implementation in World Wide Web browsers.  This format
has been implemented in the IPv6 versions of several widely deployed
browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Lynx.  It
is also intended to be used in the IPv6 version of the service
location protocol.

This document incudes an update to the generic syntax for Uniform
Resource Identifiers defined in RFC 2396.  It defines a syntax for
IPv6 addresses and allows the use of "[" within a URI explicitly or
this reserved purpose.

Working Group Summary

There have been several attempts to get a format for embedding literal
IPv6 addresses within URLs. All suffer from the problem that they use
special characters that are objectionable to some group (i.e., they
are also reserved characters in other contexts and must consequently
be escaped in such environments). Thus, there appears to be no
solution that appeals to everyone. The format specified in this
document is deemed the least worst solution of those that have been
proposed and there was strong (though rough) consensus to that effect.

Protocol Quality

This document has been reviewed for the IESG by Thomas Narten and Erik
Nordmark.