In the past I've said that Safari didn't support IPv6. I may have been tricked by my customary rather simplistic test.
In the past, I've usually tested for IPv6 awareness in browsers by surfing to the KAME project home page. They have some code on their page to provide alternate content for those fetching the page over IPv6 (the "Dancing Kame").
When I last tried this with Safari, I got the IPv4 page. I was playing around with a friend's web site this evening when I discovered to my shock that Safari was trying to use IPv6 to get there.
The upshot is that Safari does not prefer IPv6 addresses (but it will use them), and the kame.net name servers give back the IPv4 address record first.
So the better way to test this is to add an entry to /etc/hosts for a nonexistent name with the IPv6 address of an IPv6 aware HTTP server (www.osxhax.com will do) and try to point Safari to that nonexistent name. If you get the page back, then IPv6 must have been used to fetch it.
I don't know if this always worked or not, but I have Panther, and it works now. Huzzah!
Posted by nsayer at November 29, 2003 07:24 PMWhee! I'm able to view the IPv6 content at KAME project simply by clicking the link... seems the Pantherized Safari is good to go in this regard.
Posted by: dspn at May 8, 2004 02:01 PMActually, you can make safari support it automatically by enabling the Debug menu on safari and disabling "http: Simple Loader" under protocols.
Posted by: William Reading at February 12, 2005 11:26 PM