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IPv6 Compatibility

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Article ID: 49780

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Updated On:

Products

APPLICATION DELIVERY ANALYSIS SUPERAGENT CA Infrastructure Performance CA NetVoyant (NetQoS / NV) CA eHealth

Issue/Introduction

Description:

ISSUE

Customers are using an IPv6 enabled server or VM and experience the following symptoms:

  1. Links to the Admin Guide and User Guide in the 'About' dialogue no longer work.

  2. Email from the host (VM or server) no longer works, when issued from a browser on localhost (on the machine itself via RDP).

DETAILS

QA has found a potential issue that our customers may run across, dealing with IPv6 compatibility. It is not product specific, so may be seen on various products.

The support for IPv6 can be enabled or disabled on a VM or server, irrespective of the settings for an individual interface. This means that even if you disable IPv6 in each of the NIC properties, the server itself could still support IPv6.

The problems this can cause are typically seen only when running a browser on the server or VM console - essentially using "localhost" as the hostname. Thus, the IPv6 issue is affecting the server and host, not the interfaces themselves.

The first place this was observed was that the links to the Administration Guide and User Guide in the "About" dialog no longer worked. Those links form a URL to the pdf files for the Guides by appending part of the pathname to the hostname of the local server.

If you run a browser on the server or VM and access the product (SuperAgent or ADA, in this case) using localhost, then the URL that the link tries to build is listed as:
http://::1/superagent/documentation/sa_adminguide.pdf

or
http://::1/superagent/documentation/sa_userguide.pdf

Note the use of ::1 where you would typically expect to see either localhost or 127.0.0.1.

This is because ::1 is the IPv6 shorthand for localhost. Neither of these links work when using the ::1, but do work correctly with 127.0.0.1.

The second place this was seen was that email from that host (VM or server) no longer worked, when issued from a browser on localhost. Again, it was found that this was due to the way that ::1 was used instead of localhost or 127.0.0.1.

Solution:

There are a couple of solutions to this issue that can be used until full IPv6 support is instituted in our products.

  • One way is to always use the IP address of the console host instead of using localhost in a browser aimed at that host. This forces the URL that is formed to contain the desired IP address and not the shortcut.

  • A second work-around is to completely disable IPv6 in the server or VM (not just in the NIC interface properties). Microsoft has a procedure to do so that is documented in the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852#letmefixit

Environment

Release: PCSTAS99000-6.1-NetQoS-Performance Center-Stand-Alone-Server
Component:
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