Lotus Domino Administrator 8.5 Help - IPv6 and Lotus Domino

NETWORK CONFIGURATION

IPv6 and Lotus Domino
Because support for IPv6 by hardware and operating system suppliers and the Internet is still in the early stages, moving to the IPv6 standard will be a gradual process for most organizations. In IBM® Lotus® Domino®, you can enable IPv6 support for SMTP, POP3, IMAP, LDAP, and HTTP services on IBM® AIX®, IBM® i, Solaris®, and Linux® systems.

Domino supports both IPv6 and IPv4. Thus, if an IPv6-enabled Domino server encounters an IP address in IPv4 format, the Domino server can still make the connection to that address. When attempting to connect to a server, Domino tries to resolve all IP addresses for a server until one works. This allows a server to have both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address. Domino caches the last successful address for a server and uses only the cached address to quickly search for a server. If you do not want to use only the cached address, enter the NOTES.INI setting DONT_USE_REMEMBERED_ADDRESSES=1.

In DNS, records that store IPv6 addresses are called AAAA records. After you enable IPv6 on a Domino server and add the server's AAAA record to DNS, another IPv6-enabled Domino server can connect to it only over IPv6. Servers that don't support IPv6 can run Domino with IPv6 support disabled, which is the default. These servers can successfully connect to IPv6-enabled Domino servers only if the DNS for the IPv6 servers contain A records.

Using IPv6 in a Domino network

For best results when using IPv6 with Domino servers, set up network devices in the network pathway to connect directly with native IPv6, rather than tunnel through the IPv4 network.

Enabling IPv6 on Notes and Domino, post release 6

To enable IPv6 on IBM® Lotus® Notes® and Domino, add the setting TCP_ENABLEIPV6=1 to the NOTES.INI file on both the Notes client and the Domino server.

How Lotus Domino decides whether to connect over IPv6 or IPv4

A Domino server evaluates the address format and then, based on that information, makes an IPv4 or an IPv6 connection.

Address format Server response

IPv4 Makes an IPv4 connection.

IPv4 address mapped to IPv6 Attempts to make an IPv6 connection and waits for the TCP/IP software to make either an IPv6 or IPv4 connection, depending on the remote system's TCP/IP stack.

IPv6 Makes an IPv6 connection.

Server name Uses DNS to resolve the name:

If only an A record is found, connects over IPv4.
If only an AAAA record is found, connects over IPv6 or waits for the TCP/IP software to make the connection.
If both an A record and AAAA record are found, uses the AAAA record.

For information about IBM® i and unsupported features, see the "Domino 8.5 for i: Unsupported features" Lotus Notes Support technote under "Additional documentation resources" in the related topics.

Related topics

NOTES.INI Settings

Enabling support for IPv6 on a Domino server

Planning the TCP/IP network

Using IPv6 address formats with Domino and Notes

Installing the IPv6 stack

Examples of using NOTES.INI variables with IPv6

Connecting a Notes client to a Domino server via IPv6

Receiving incoming connections on IPv6 sockets or IPv4 sockets

Additional documentation resources

Glossary

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Glossary

Address format	Server response
IPv4	Makes an IPv4 connection.
IPv4 address mapped to IPv6	Attempts to make an IPv6 connection and waits for the TCP/IP software to make either an IPv6 or IPv4 connection, depending on the remote system's TCP/IP stack.
IPv6	Makes an IPv6 connection.
Server name	Uses DNS to resolve the name: If only an A record is found, connects over IPv4. If only an AAAA record is found, connects over IPv6 or waits for the TCP/IP software to make the connection. If both an A record and AAAA record are found, uses the AAAA record.