Networking Support, Including IPv6

New features include support for IPv6 in TCP- and UDP-based applications, and support for unconnected/unbound sockets, allowing more flexible socket creation, binding, and connection. A mechanism called Java Secure Socket Extension provides encryption for data sent via sockets, and a new class, URI, allows URI construction and parsing without the presence of a protocol handler. The FTP Protocol Handler has been overhauled for conformity to current standards. The default character set is now UTF8, and APIs have been added to enable other character schemes.

A new class, NetworkInterface, allows enumeration of interfaces and addresses, and JNDI DNS SP Support in InetAddress enables applications to configure a pure Java name service provider. TCP out-of-band data provides support for legacy applications; a UDP Connection function registers destination address with the OS, enabling asynchronous errors to be returned on the UDP socket; and full SOCkS V5 and V4 TCP support includes auto-negotiation with the proxy for which version to use. In addition, there are improvements to streaming, request and response headers processing, and error handling.

For more information, see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/net/enhancements14.html.