Re: [Exim] v6

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Kevin Sindhu
CC: Juha Saarinen, Randy Bush, exim users, Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino
Subject: Re: [Exim] v6
On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Kevin Sindhu wrote:

> Philip - How about having exim IPv6 enabled by default? I mean what
> harm does it do.


This is clearly an aim one day. The problem is deciding when. If I had
done that when the first IPv6 code was put into Exim, it would have
failed to compile on most OS on which it ran, because the IPv6 libraries
were not present. (That was release 1.62, some time in 1997.)

> Even if a site is not IPv6 ready yet, it should still
> be able to lookup a IPv6 host/site.


That's just the DNS looking up bit. Enabling IPv6 changes a lot more
than that.

Nowadays, I think most OS do include the IPv6 libraries. But some people
still run old versions. IPv6 didn't make it into Solaris until Solaris
8. I bet there is still a lot of Solaris pre-8 around, for example.

So I'm cautious. I don't think the time is quite right yet.

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.