What socket family should be used for an IP that looks as follows and it is IP4 mapped to IPV6 as far as I know:
::ffff:171.167.66.44
AF_INET or AF_INET_6
Any useful documentation would be really appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance
This ...
::ffff:171.167.66.44
... is an IPv4-mapped IPv6 address. It conveys an IPv4 address in IPv6 format, and the address family is thus AF_INET6. That is how you must configure a socket that you will connect to such an address.
This is useful primarily for a dual-stack machine. It must understand the IPv6-formatted address, and it must communicate with the specified endpoint via IPv4.
Here is a discussion over on ServerFault: https://serverfault.com/a/1102261.
Here is what IBM has to say about it in the zOS docs: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/2.2.0?topic=addresses-ipv4-mapped-ipv6.