IP version 6 support in OJS

Software Support
1

IPv6 address ranges seem to be rejected as invalid input for the “IP ranges” field for an institutional subscription in OJS.

When editing an institutional subscription to add IP ranges, it seems that IPv6 address ranges cannot be added. Saving the subscription with an IPv6 address range fails with the messages “Errors occurred processing this form: Please enter a valid IP range.”

Is IPv6 supported for the IP address ranges of institutional subscriptions?

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

J

2

Hi @journal33,

What version of OJS are you using?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hi Alec,

Version is either 2.3.7 or 2.4.6.
Site Administrator program on the server reports under System Information that the OJS version is 2.3.7.0. But the person who administers OJS on the server says it has been upgraded to 2.4.6.

Thanks,
J

4

Hi @journal33,

OJS 2.3.7 is almost guaranteed to have trouble with IPv6 addresses. If your system is reporting version 2.3.7, then the upgrade probably didn’t complete fully; your administrator will have seen status information on this problem during the upgrade process.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

Hi Alec,

Thank you. That is very helpful.

If the system had been successfully upgraded to 2.4.6, would IPv6 addresses be accepted in an institutional subscription’s “IP ranges” field?

J

6

Hi @journal33,

It looks like we currently don’t support IPv6 addresses in institutional subscriptions. This is likely something we’ll tackle when we add subscription support to OJS 3.x, currently planned for version 3.1.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

1 Like
7

Hi Alec,

That is helpful to know. Thanks again.

Does using the “Domain” field in the institutional subscription provide a workaround for this?

That is, if we edit the the subscription and add an internet domain name to it, will requests from IPv6 addresses within that domain be recognised by OJS as being from that domain and hence allowed access to the journal? Or when the internet domain name is added to the subscription, does this currently serve only to give access to IPv4 addresses within the domain?

J

8

Hi @journal33,

Yes, that could be a potential workaround for the time being. The institutional validation check uses PHP’s getHostByAddr function, which should resolve both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to their respective domains. However, you’ll need to be running a not-too-old version of PHP in order for this to work, i.e. PHP 5.3+

Cheers,
Michael