Internet Protocol (-ipver)

Use Internet Protocol (-ipver) to identify the IP version for network connections.

Operating system and syntax UNIX Windows 
-ipver { IPv4 | IPv6 }
Use with Maximum value Minimum value Single-user default Multi-user default
Client Connection, Database Server – – – IPv4
IPv4
Specifies Internet Protocol Version 4. Only network connections with IPv4 are allowed.
IPv6
Specifies Internet Protocol Version 6. IPv6 allows network connections with IPv6 addresses and mapped IPv4 addresses. OpenEdge supports V4 mapped addresses where underlying operating system support exists: UNIX, Linux, and Windows.
Note: The -ipver startup parameter is case sensitive, and must be specified in all lower case. The values IPv4 and IPv6 are not case sensitive, and can be specified in any case.

Port mapping for IPv4 network connections behaves differently than IPv6 network connections. When providing a non-local network address using -H, IPv4 will bind all the addresses on the system. IPv6 binds only those network addresses specified with -H.

These port mapping differences have the following effects:

  • Multi-homed systems (those connected to several LANs) need multiple brokers if they need to be accessed by clients from multiple networks. In particular, if you associate -H with a non-local address, the client can not connect with -H localhost.

    In previous multi-homed systems (those using IPv4) servers were bound to all interfaces on the system (binding occurred for INADDR_ANY). Only one broker supported connections from all LANs to which the system was connected. With IPv6, binding is specific to the addresses specified with -H.

  • IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible for environments using a dual protocol database with two brokers listening on both TCP4 and TCP6.

    Starting a server with IPv4 and a non-local network address binds it to all addresses on the system, preventing further binds on the same port with a specific IPv6 address. Conversely, if a server is already bound to a TCP6 address/port, starting up another server on the same port with IPv4 may fail because on some systems (for example, LINUX) a bind to INADDR_ANY reserves the port number in the IPv6 space.