IPv6 Enabling CIFS/SMB Applications

Today IPv6 is no longer the protocol of the future, it is being extensively deployed in production networks. The central pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted in 2010 to 2011. As a result, Governments and organisations world-wide have been mandating its use for a number of years. As a CIFS/SMB developer, the time has come where you can no longer ignore IPv6. IPv6 is the default protocol in all major operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. CIFS and Active Directory have had support for IPv6 for a number of years. This paper will address the key issues facing CIFS/SMB developers when migrating their applications to IPv6. It will provide a review of the status of IPv6 in Samba and Windows and describe how CIFS/SMB applications should be migrated to IPv6. This presentation will also include a brief IPv6 API and porting tutorial presenting the key things that developers need to know about IPv6 and the IPv6 socket API in order to effectively use IPv6 in their applications. Dr David Holder is closely involved in the migration of Samba to IPv6. He has worked with IPv6 for well over a decade and is a regular speaker at global IPv6 conferences.

Learning Objectives

Understand the support for IPv6 in key CIFS/SMB implementations
Appreciate some of the key differences between IPv4 and IPv6
Learn the basic principles of migrating applications to IPv6