[tech] IPv6 addresses in URLs

[Alex // nytpu]

On 2021-04-15 08:07PM, almaember wrote:
> Please excuse my lack of knowledge about SNI, but can't clients send
> the IP address as a host too?
RFC-6066 mandates the use of fully qualified domain names, but says:
> ...Currently, the only server names supported are DNS hostnames;
> however, this does not imply any dependency of TLS on DNS, and other
> name types may be added in the future...

It also says:
> Literal IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are not permitted in "HostName".
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6066#section-3

TLS 1.3 simply says that it's mandatory to implement SNI as specified in
RFC6066 §3, so unfortunately no updates there
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8446#section-9.2

* * *

However, right before sending this, I realized that there's a key point that I
didn't realize until reading the spec just now: the HostName field can be 0
characters.  TLS 1.3 (and Gemini over TLS 1.2) mandates that the SNI extension
/exists/ in the ClientHello, but the hostname field itself can be empty,
indicating to use some "default" at the operators discresion.  If anyone has a
gitlab account, this might be a good thing to open an issue to clarify.

~nytpu

-- 
Alex // nytpu
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