11. Textual Representation

As already mentioned, to specify an IPv6 non-global address without ambiguity, an intended scope zone should be specified as well. As a common notation to specify the scope zone, an implementation SHOULD support the following format:

<address>%<zone_id>

where

<address> is a literal IPv6 address,
<zone_id> is a string identifying the zone of the address, and
% is a delimiter character to distinguish between <address> and <zone_id>.

The following subsections describe detailed definitions, concrete examples, and additional notes of the format.

11.1 Non-Global Addresses

The format applies to all kinds of unicast and multicast addresses of non-global scope except the unspecified address, which does not have a scope. The format is meaningless and should not be used for global addresses. The loopback address belongs to the trivial link; i.e., the link attached to the loopback interface. Thus the format should not be used for the loopback address, either. This document does not specify the usage of the format when the <address> is the unspecified address, as the address does not have a scope. This document, however, does not prohibit an implementation from using the format for those special addresses for implementation dependent purposes.

11.2 The <zone_id> Part

In the textual representation, the <zone_id> part should be able to identify a particular zone of the address's scope. Although a zone index is expected to contain enough information to determine the scope and to be unique among all scopes as described in Section 6, the <zone_id> part of this format does not have to contain the scope. This is because the <address> part should specify the appropriate scope. This also means that the <zone_id> part does not have to be unique among all scopes.

With this loosened property, an implementation can use a convenient representation as <zone_id>. For example, to represent link index 2, the implementation can simply use "2" as <zone_id>, which would be more readable than other representations that contain the "link" scope.

When an implementation interprets the format, it should construct the "full" zone index, which contains the scope, from the <zone_id> part and the scope specified by the <address> part. (Remember that a zone index itself should contain the scope, as specified in Section 6.)

An implementation SHOULD support at least numerical indices that are non-negative decimal integers as <zone_id>. The default zone index, which should typically be 0 (see Section 6), is included in the integers. When <zone_id> is the default, the delimiter characters "%" and <zone_id> can be omitted. Similarly, if a textual representation of an IPv6 address is given without a zone index, it should be interpreted as <address>%<default ID>, where <default ID> is the default zone index of the scope that <address> has.

An implementation MAY support other kinds of non-null strings as <zone_id>. However, the strings must not conflict with the delimiter character. The precise format and semantics of additional strings is implementation dependent.

One possible candidate for these strings would be interface names, as interfaces uniquely disambiguate any scopes. In particular, interface names can be used as "default identifiers" for interfaces and links, because by default there is a one-to-one mapping between interfaces and each of those scopes as described in Section 6.

An implementation could also use interface names as <zone_id> for scopes larger than links, but there might be some confusion in this use. For example, when more than one interface belongs to the same (multicast) site, a user would be confused about which interface should be used. Also, a mapping function from an address to a name would encounter the same kind of problem when it prints an address with an interface name as a zone index. This document does not specify how these cases should be treated and leaves it implementation dependent.

It cannot be assumed that indices are common across all nodes in a zone (see Section 6). Hence, the format MUST be used only within a node and MUST NOT be sent on the wire unless every node that interprets the format agrees on the semantics.

11.3 Examples

The following addresses

fe80::1234 (on the 1st link of the node)
ff02::5678 (on the 5th link of the node)
ff08::9abc (on the 10th organization of the node)

would be represented as follows:

fe80::1234%1
ff02::5678%5
ff08::9abc%10

(Here we assume a natural translation from a zone index to the <zone_id> part, where the Nth zone of any scope is translated into "N".)

If we use interface names as <zone_id>, those addresses could also be represented as follows:

fe80::1234%ne0
ff02::5678%pvc1.3
ff08::9abc%interface10

where the interface "ne0" belongs to the 1st link, "pvc1.3" belongs to the 5th link, and "interface10" belongs to the 10th organization.

11.4 Usage Examples

Applications that are supposed to be used in end hosts such as telnet, ftp, and ssh may not explicitly support the notion of address scope, especially of link-local addresses. However, an expert user (e.g., a network administrator) sometimes has to give even link-local addresses to such applications.

Here is a concrete example. Consider a multi-linked router called "R1" that has at least two point-to-point interfaces (links). Each of the interfaces is connected to another router, "R2" and "R3", respectively. Also assume that the point-to-point interfaces have link-local addresses only.

Now suppose that the routing system on R2 hangs up and has to be reinvoked. In this situation, we may not be able to use a global address of R2, because this is routing trouble and we cannot expect to have enough routes for global reachability to R2.

Hence, we have to login R1 first and then try to login R2 by using link-local addresses. In this case, we have to give the link-local address of R2 to, for example, telnet. Here we assume the address is fe80::2.

Note that we cannot just type

% telnet fe80::2

here, since R1 has more than one link and hence the telnet command cannot detect which link it should try to use for connecting. Instead, we should type the link-local address with the link index as follows:

% telnet fe80::2%3

where "3" after the delimiter character % corresponds to the link index of the point-to-point link.

An extension to the recommended basic API defines how the format for non-global addresses should be treated in library functions that translate a nodename to an address, or vice versa [11].

11.6 Omitting Zone Indices

The format defined in this document does not intend to invalidate the original format for non-global addresses; that is, the format without the zone index portion. As described in Section 6, in some common cases with the notion of the default zone index, there can be no ambiguity about scope zones. In such an environment, the implementation can omit the "%<zone_id>" part. As a result, it can act as though it did not support the extended format at all.

11.7 Combinations of Delimiter Characters

There are other kinds of delimiter characters defined for IPv6 addresses. In this subsection, we describe how they should be combined with the format for non-global addresses.

The IPv6 addressing architecture [1] also defines the syntax of IPv6 prefixes. If the address portion of a prefix is non-global and its scope zone should be disambiguated, the address portion SHOULD be in the format. For example, a link-local prefix fe80::/64 on the second link can be represented as follows:

fe80::%2/64

In this combination, it is important to place the zone index portion before the prefix length when we consider parsing the format by a name-to-address library function [11]. That is, we can first separate the address with the zone index from the prefix length, and just pass the former to the library function.

The preferred format for literal IPv6 addresses in URLs is also defined [12]. When a user types the preferred format for an IPv6 non-global address whose zone should be explicitly specified, the user could use the format for the non-global address combined with the preferred format.

However, the typed URL is often sent on the wire, and it would cause confusion if an application did not strip the <zone_id> portion before sending. Note that the applications should not need to care about which kind of addresses they're using, much less parse or strip out the <zone_id> portion of the address.

Also, the format for non-global addresses might conflict with the URI syntax [13], since the syntax defines the delimiter character (%) as the escape character. This conflict would require, for example, that the <zone_id> part for zone 1 with the delimiter be represented as '%251'. It also means that we could not simply copy a non-escaped format from other sources as input to the URI parser. Additionally, if the URI parser does not convert the escaped format before passing it to a name-to-address library, the conversion will fail. All these issues would decrease the benefit of the textual representation described in this section.

Hence, this document does not specify how the format for non-global addresses should be combined with the preferred format for literal IPv6 addresses. In any case, it is recommended to use an FQDN instead of a literal IPv6 address in a URL, whenever an FQDN is available.