Ocamlnet 4 Reference Manual : Ocamlnet4

# Ocamlnet4

# What's new in OCamlnet 4

## Security

The main focus of this major version is the addition of strong authentication and security. In particular, TLS is now available for all protocols. In order to achieve this, and to provide better service functions, we switched from OpenSSL to GnuTLS. However, as it is uncertain which TLS library will be the best in the future, the core TLS interface has been factored out, and is now defined as module type. So, if e.g. LibreSSL will make it in the future, it is relatively easy to switch. The TLS provider is now a first-class module, and plugging in an alternate provider just means to pass a different provider module to the protocol interpreter. Read more about TLS: `Tls`.

There are also a lot of utility functions for TLS. In particular, there is a parser for X.509 certificates, and there are helpers for dealing with distinguished names. `Netx509`, `Netdn`.

From GnuTLS (and in particular from its crypto toolkit Nettle) we also get access to basic cryptographic functions, including hash functions and symmetric ciphers. The latter are sometimes even accelerated on modern hardware (in particular AES). `Netsys_digests`, `Netsys_ciphers`.

While TLS is good for establishing private channels, TLS client authentication is not that popular. Many protocols prefer SASL, which is now also defined as pluggable module: `Netsys_sasl_types`, `Netsys_sasl`. There are a number of mechanisms: PLAIN, CRAM-MD5, DIGEST-MD5, SCRAM-SHA1, GSSAPI, GS2-KRB5,

Many organizations use Kerberos as network login method. Access to Kerberos authentication is possible via the GSSAPI, a system interface for authentication and security modules. The GSSAPI is available directly or via SASL. Support for GSSAPI has been added to all protocols for which it is defined (HTTP clients, FTP clients, RPC clients and servers, and other protocols via SASL). Read more: `Gssapi`.

## Completed IPv6 support

IPv6 functionality is now automatically enabled for a number of popular OS when it is obvious that IPv6 is configured (i.e. that there is an network interface with a global IPv6 address). Read more: `Ipv6`

For most protocols IPv6 was already available in OCamlnet-3. There was one exception, though: The RPC Portmapper protocol isn't capable of IPv6. There is the newer RPCBIND protocol, though, and we support it now.

## Reorganization

There are a couple of renamings. The most important ones:

- `Http_client`: now `Nethttp_client`
- `Ftp_client`: now `Netftp_client`
- `Xdr`: now `Netxdr`

This means almost all OCamlnet modules use now the prefixes `Net`, `Uq_`, `Rpc_` or `Shell_` (the only exceptions are `Unixqueue` and `Equeue`).

The Unicode tables have been factored out of `netstring` and are now provided as `netunidata` library. Note that this means that the table are inaccessible unless `netunidata` is linked in. Get more information here: `Netunidata`.

A few other notable updates:

- The `pop` and `smtp` libraries have been added to `netclient`
- `equeue-ssl` does not exist anymore. See `Tls` about how to get TLS support nevertheless.
- `netcgi1` has been deleted. Use `netcgi2` instead.
- `rpc-auth-dh` has been deleted. Use the GSSAPI-based authentication for RPC instead.

## Not yet

A few things would have been good to have in OCamlnet-4, but they were not available in time:

- Support for the new `Bytes` type
- HTTP authentication on the server side
- Advanced HTTP authentication frameworks such as OAUTH
- Support for reading passwords from files
- Non-blocking name lookups