IPv6 Protocol and Windows Product Versions
There are different versions of the Microsoft IPv6 protocol for Windows. In this book I have chosen to confine the discussion to the versions of IPv6 that are designed and supported for production use—the ones supplied with the Windows .NET Server 2003 family and Windows XP Service Pack 1 (and later). These two versions of the IPv6 protocol are not identical.
The features included for the IPv6 protocol for the Windows .NET Server 2003 family that are not included in the IPv6 protocol for the Windows XP Service Pack 1 are the following:
- Support for sending DNS traffic over IPv6
- Support for file and print sharing over IPv6
- Support for Web server
- Support for Windows Media Services
The IPv6 protocol for the Windows XP Service Pack 1 contains the Ipv6.exe configuration tool and the Ping6.exe and Tracert6.exe diagnostics tools. These tools are not included in the IPv6 protocol for the Windows .NET Server 2003 family and will eventually be removed in future versions of Windows XP. Their use is discouraged in favor of commands in the netsh interface ipv6 context in place of Ipv6.exe, the IPv6-enabled Ping.exe in place of Ping6.exe, and the IPv6-enabled Tracert.exe in place of Tracert6.exe.
