IPv6

Contents

• Goals
• Basic Design
• Needed Changes

Goals

Allow IPv6 to be used over the ethereum peer network

Basic Design

Allow IP addresses to be specified either as a 4-byte array (IPv4) or a 16-byte array (IPv6).

Needed Changes

Peers [0x05, [ip1: B_4 OR B_16, port1: P, id1: B_64], [ip2: B_4 OR B_16, port2: P, id2: B_64], ... ] Specifies a number of known peers.

• ip is either a 4-byte array 'ABCD' that should be interpreted as the IPv4 address A.B.C.D or a 8-byte array 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP' that should be interpreted as the IPv6 address AB:CD:EF:GH:IJ:KL:MN:OP.
• port is a 2-byte array that should be interpreted as a 16-bit big-endian integer.
• id is the 512-bit hash that acts as the unique identifier of the node.