[boost] asio review -- IPV4/V6 issue

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-12-30 23:30:51

A group of folks here in Phoenix got together and had a little asio 'review
party'.  Before we had too many beers to be useful, there was one primary
issue the group discussed that I'd like to bring to the list -- some minor
stuff will go offlist to Christopher directly. 

As was discussed early on in the review asio doesn't currently support ipv6. 
However, going forward ipv6 support is critical for the "Phoenix Group". 
Given the current asio interfaces it seems clear that the extension will come
in the form of another namespace -- presumably asio::ipv6.  This means that
client code will need to be modified to make the upgrade to ipv6.  The need to
modify code for ipv6 support was disliked by the group.  It was the consensus
of this group that it would be preferable to explore a solution that could
support both ipv4 and ipv6 addresses seemlessly without changes to client
code. Part of the rationale for this is that most applications don't directly
configure the ip addresses in code, but rather read them from configurations.
Hence it would be nice if the upgrade was as simple as swithching over the
configuration.  Thus the same compiled app could directly support ipv4 and ipv6.

Thoughts, discussion?

Jeff