NETWORKING FEATURES SUMMARY FOR 1.4 RELEASE IPv6 This enables using IPv6 in TCP and UDP-based applications, including multicast, and will support most end-user applications in use today. Unconnected/Unbound Socket Support Allows more flexible socket creation, binding, and connection. Enables manipulation of socket options before connection. Example, you can now open a socket with timeout. There is a subclass of java.net.Socket which provides security through encryption. The mechanism is called the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE). The Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) has been integrated into the J2SE v 1.4 and provides encryption for data sent via sockets. UDP Connection The connect function with UDP will register the destination address with the OS, which will enable asynchronous errors to be returned on the UDP socket. The implementation and behaviour of ICMP port unreachable varies widely between different OSes. We worked around many of the differences and presented a uniform behaviour as much as possible across platforms. URI This is a new class in Merlin. It allows URI construction and parsing without the presence of a protocol handler, which is not possible with the URL class. URI class is compliant with RFC 2396. FTP Protocol Handler Significant overhaul to make it conform as much as possible to the current standards (RFC 1738 & 959). JNDI DNS SP Support in InetAddress This enables applications to configure a pure Java name service provider. In this case to use a DNS name service provider through JNDI. URLEncoder and URLDecoder Improvements The default character set is now UTF8. We also added APIs to enable applications to use other character encoding/decoding schemes. TCP Out-of-Band Data Limited support for TCP urgent data is provided in order to support certain legacy applications. It is possible to send urgent data on any TCP socket. However, only partial support for receiving urgent data is provided. SOCKS Full V5 (RFC 1928) & V4 TCP support with autonegociation with the proxy of which version to use. NetworkInterface This is a new class in Merlin. It allows enumeration of interfaces and addresses. Other Major Improvements Improved Http streaming, request and response headers processing, and error handling.