Table of Contents

Table of Chapters

8. Introduction to NicheStack IPv6

InterNiche IPv6 was designed to be added to existing InterNiche based systems with minimal impact on pre-existing applications and drivers. Applications using IPv4 sockets will run unchanged on the new "dual mode" (IPv4 and IPv6) stack, although these applications will need to be modified if they are to use IPv6 capabilities. Sockets modification for IPv6 are described in Chapter 12.

Device drivers written for IPv4 which already support the multicast option may be used for IPv6 "as-is", although some performance enhancements may be required to gain advantage of zero-copy throughput with IPv6 applications. Device drivers that do not currently support multicast will need to have the feature added, since multicast is a requirement for IPv6. Descriptions of the device driver changes are described in Chapter 15.