3.1. Searching
3.1. Searching
3.1.1. General Summary
A search of an IPv6 address if conducted through a UNIX system is usually case sensitive and extended options that allow for regular expression use will come in handy. However, there are many applications in the Internet today that do not provide this capability. When searching for an IPv6 address in such systems, the system engineer will have to try each and every possibility to search for an address. This has critical impacts, especially when trying to deploy IPv6 over an enterprise network.
3.1.2. Searching Spreadsheets and Text Files
Spreadsheet applications and text editors on GUI systems rarely have the ability to search for text using regular expression. Moreover, there are many non-engineers (who are not aware of case sensitivity and regular expression use) that use these applications to manage IP addresses. This has worked quite well with IPv4 since text representation in IPv4 has very little flexibility. There is no incentive to encourage these non-engineers to change their tool or learn regular expression when they decide to go dual-stack. If the entry in the spreadsheet reads, 2001:db8::1:0:0:1, but the search was conducted as 2001:db8:0:0:1::1, this will show a result of no match. One example where this will cause a problem is, when the search is being conducted to assign a new address from a pool, and a check is being done to see if it is not in use. This may cause problems for the end-hosts or end-users. This type of address management is very often seen in enterprise networks and ISPs.
3.1.3. Searching with Whois
The "whois" utility is used by a wide range of people today. When a record is set to a database, one will likely check the output to see if the entry is correct. If an entity was recorded as 2001:db8::/48, but the whois output showed 2001:0db8:0000::/48, most non-engineers would think that their input was wrong and will likely retry several times or make a frustrated call to the database hostmaster. If there was a need to register the same prefix on different systems, and each system showed a different text representation, this would confuse people even more. Although this document focuses on addresses rather than prefixes, it is worth mentioning the prefix problems because the problems encountered with addresses and prefixes are mostly equal.
3.1.4. Searching for an Address in a Network Diagram
Network diagrams and blueprints often show what IP addresses are assigned to a system devices. In times of trouble shooting there may be a need to search through a diagram to find the point of failure (for example, if a traceroute stopped at 2001:db8::1, one would search the diagram for that address). This is a technique quite often in use in enterprise networks and managed services. Again, the different flavors of text representation will result in a time-consuming search leading to longer mean times to restoration (MTTR) in times of trouble.