Knowledge Layer :: IIS6 and IPv6 compatibility issues.

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IIS 6.0 uses the same functionality for uses of IPv6 as it does for clients of IPv4. Though only a subset of IIS 6.0 functions are available to clients of IPv6. Below is a list of what we feel are the most significant differences.

The IIS 6.0 user manager does not support IPv6 addresses. The IIS Manager will not display IPv6 addresses as it would with an older IPv4 address, the user interface does not provide a way to manage IPv6 addresses. Manipulating literal hexadecimal IPv6 addresses is really not recommended, so lack of this function is unlikely to prevent you from using IPv6.

IP Address restrictions function is not supported. The IP Address Restrictions function in IIS 6.0 does not support IPv6 addresses and or the IPv6 prefixes.

FTP, SMTP, NNTP services are not supported in IIS6. IPv6 is only supported for the httpd service in IIS 6.0

If IPv6 is installed and running on a computer with IIS 6.0 all websites respond to IPv6 clients. IIS 6.0 does not allow you to configure individual sites and or virtual directories to respond to IPv6 client while others on the same server respond to IPv4 traffic.

Will Bandwidth throttling work for requests sent over an IPv6 address? No, if you change the MaxBanwidth and MaxGlobalBandwidth properties it will not affect the IPv6 network traffic. The connection limits and connection time-outs that are related to IIS 6.0 are supported.

Does SeverBindings and SecureBindings properties work with an IPv6 address? ServerBindings and SecureBindings properties specify strings that IIS 6.0 uses to determine which network endpoints are used by the server instance. The format of the string for ServerBindings is IPAddress:Port:HostName, Both the IPAdress and HostName parameters of the string are optional; though the IPAdress portion of it is limited to storing an IPv4 address. All unspecified parameters default to an all-inclusive wildcard.

Because of the above said limitations on the properties. IIS 6.0 functionality affects IPv6 as follows

Site routing is limited to host only headers. You can’t have sites configured to route on an IPv6 address or on a combination of an IPv6 address and host header. This limitation also affects sites that are configured to route based on an IPv4 address. When you install IPv6, sites that are already specifically configured for IPv4 site-based routing do not respond to requests that come in over IPv6.

The number of SSL sites is limited to one. Due to the routing restrictions on IPv6, IIS 6.0 deployments designed for IPv6 sites are limited to one SSL site per computer.