On 01 November the South African Revenue Service (Sars) announced that it would be changing its Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) and Applicability Statement 3 (AS3) communication in live and test environments on 30 November.
Sars is expecting the switchover to take place from 22:00 and it will last for approximately three hours. Accordingly, Sars clients’ firewalls will need to allow the new IPs for inbound and outbound traffic. Firewall rules can be added prior to the change. For AS2 live response messages from Sars, there are two IPs and both need to be allowed as the load is split over two nodes.
The public DNS hostname for the Sars EDI gateway connection will remain “EDIB2B.SARS.GOV.ZA”
Sars has requested that its clients check whether they use an IP address or Domain Name System (DNS) hostnames in their software. If they cannot use public host names, they will need their technical support to change the IP address on the specific changeover date and time. There will be no change to the current ports used.
It is also highly recommended that Sars clients’ network/firewall support be available on the evening of the changeover should any issues be encountered. No testing will be possible ahead of the changeover as the change is as a result of changing service provider.