You should store IPv6 as a pair of 64-bit integers. While PHP lacks the function set to do this on its own, it's not very difficult to do. Here are a set of functions I wrote a while back to do just that (though I admit I should spend some time to try and make it more elegant and I'm not sure it's completely up to date compared to my local copy ... I would love some eyes on it to make some improvements). http://soucy.org/project/inet6/ I would point out that many developers don't even store IP addresses correctly and just treat them as a string. In regards to storing as a pair of 64-bit integers, I would caution against the temptation of treating one field as the prefix and the other as the host segment. While the 64-bit boundary is most common, it is certainly not required, so please write your IPv6 support in a way that will allow any valid prefix-length. While PHP hasn't been my language of choice in the past, it seems to be something that almost everyone knows, or can learn very quickly. I've started using it as a command line scripting language quite a bit as a result ... pretty much a cleaner Perl, the upshot is that you don't have all the pre-written libraries that you'd find with Perl. I've tried switching to Python for some things, but I got annoyed with the specification being in a constant state of drastic syntax change. But back to the topic at hand. I think the OP was expressing that until developers have native IPv6 access at home, they just won't care about IPv6 support, or won't test it as well as IPv4 support. That's pretty much expected and I'm not even sure why it's being stated as some revelation. As many have pointed out, there are tunnel brokers available to developers to test IPv6 with, but at the end of the day, most people don't want to use a slow tunnel for anything byond testing, and if they don't have a lot of users asking for IPv6 they're probably not going to give it much attention until they see a need for it. The majority of larger applications support IPv6 just fine because there are enough users asking for IPv6 support. I suspect once you see native IPv6 for residential users become more common you'll see the developers who have been dragging their feet give in and add IPv6 support. As mentioned with a shift to web applications though the browser, it's been a lot less work. Just throw your application on a server with IPv6 and it will generally work. You might need to modify a few places that interact with IP addresses, but usually they're pretty trivial (like logging) unless it's a network management oriented application. On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Jeroen Massar <jeroen@unfix.org> wrote:
On 2012-11-29 13:53 , . wrote:
On 29 November 2012 12:48, Dobbins, Roland <rdobbins@arbor.net> wrote:
On Nov 29, 2012, at 6:47 PM, Bjørn Mork wrote:
What's the proper term for software which happens to access the network?
Just about anything, these days.
;>
'Network-enabled' or 'network-capable' software, maybe?
Connecting a app to a network is a fundamental change, so perhaps change the app to become a "network app". A piece of software connected to a network turns from a product into a service.
"Programmers" is to a wide group of people. I am PHP programmer. How will ipv6 impact me? nothing, probably.
*ahem*
As Owen already alluded to, some programs (PHP also) actually store IP addresses in databases. Thus if you where storing those as 32bit, you are out of luck.
[..]
There are two groups of programmers, a) these that have programming only as a job, and b) these that invest time beyond that.
Group a for you? :)
Greets, Jeroen
-- Ray Patrick Soucy Network Engineer University of Maine System T: 207-561-3526 F: 207-561-3531 MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network www.maineren.net