The following are the new features in Oracle Net Services:

• Listener Parameter for Multiple Redirects

  Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2), Oracle Net listener supports multiple redirects with the introduction of a new listener parameter, ALLOW_MULTIPLE_REDIRECTS_listener_name. It supports seamless migration of a PDB from a local database to the Oracle Public Cloud.

  See Also:

  Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide for information about this parameter

• Sharding and Data Dependent Routing

  This feature provides the ability to horizontally partition the data across multiple independent Oracle databases, also called shards, and based on a key specified in the connect string, route the database requests to a particular shard.

  See Also:

  • CONNECT_DATA section for information about the new parameters

  • Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide for information about data-dependent routing

  • Oracle Data Provider for .NET Developer's Guide for Microsoft Windows for more information about this feature

• SCAN Listener Support for HTTP

  This feature enables load balancing across the HTTP presentation handlers residing on different nodes by redirecting to the least loaded node.

• ExaDirect SQL*Net Adapter

  Use the ExaDirect SQL*Net adapter for low overhead database access. Use the new transport to improve latency and throughput by leveraging Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) in an InfiniBand environment.

  See Also:

  Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide for information

• Direct SQL*Net Access Over Oracle Cloud

  This feature enables Oracle Cloud support for Oracle Database over SQL*Net. The existing applications can now use Oracle Cloud without any code changes. The database clients can connect to Oracle Cloud using Oracle Connection Manager.

• Service-Level ACLs for TCP Protocol

  This feature allows every database service to have its own access control list (ACL) and the ACL is based on IPs. Since each pluggable database is a different service, this feature enables different pluggable databases to have different ACLs. These ACLs are enforced by the listener. In other words, access to a pluggable database service is enabled only for IPs that are permitted through an ACL.

• Better Security for Password Verifiers

  Starting with this release, Oracle Database provides several enhancements for password authentication verifiers.

  • The default for the SQLNET.ALLOWED_LOGIN_VERSION_SERVER parameter is now 12 (Exclusive Mode) instead of 11. A setting of 12 generates both 11G and 12C verifiers. If you want to restrict the verifier generation to the 12C verifier, then you can set SQLNET.ALLOWED_LOGIN_VERSION_SERVER to 12a.

  • The 12C verifier is now generated automatically. In previous releases, the 10G verifier was generated automatically.

  See Also:

  Oracle Database Security Guide for more information about this feature.

• Additional Supported Encryption Algorithms

  Starting with this release, you can use the ARIA, GOST, and SEED encryption algorithms for both column encryption and tablespace encryption, in addition to the AES and DES encryption standards. The following are the benefits of these new encryption standards:

  • ARIA uses the same block sizes as AES. It is designed for lightweight environments and the implementation of hardware.

  • GOST is very similar to DES except that it has a large number of rounds and secret S-boxes.

  • SEED is used by several standard protocols: S/MIME, TLS/SSL, IPSec, and ISO/IEC.

The following feature is deprecated in this release:

Deprecation of Weak Native Network Encryption and Integrity Algorithms

The DES, DES40, 3DES112, 3DES168, RC4_40, RC4_56, RC4_128, RC4_256, and MD5 algorithms are deprecated in this release.

As a result of this deprecation, Oracle recommends that you review your network encryption and integrity configuration to check if you have specified any of the deprecated weak algorithms.

To transition your Oracle Database environment to use stronger algorithms, download and install the patch described in My Oracle Support note 2118136.2.