IPv6 Address (Internet Protocol version 6)
First of all, let’s discuss the basics of IPv6 address and at the end of this post, I will share How to do IPv6 Address shortening or how to write IPv6 address in short form. IPv6 Address is 128-bit address and it is the latest version of IP addresses. IPv6 implements first 64-bit for network address while remaining 64-bits are reserved for the host address. IPv4 supports 4.3*10^9 (4.3 billion) addresses, which are not sufficient as per the growth of address requirement in recent years. So, from overcoming this problem IPv6 has been launched. IPv6 provides with 3.4*10^38 addresses, or 5*10 ^ 28 (50 Octillion) addresses which are much larger in number than the current requirement of IP addresses.
IPv6 addresses format is represented in hexadecimal colon notation to make this address readable. For example 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:0063:0000:0000:FEFB.
IPv6 Address shortening | How to write IPv6 Address in short form
Rule 1: Discard leading Zero.
In Block 5, 0063, the leading two 0s can be omitted.
- Before: 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:0063:0000:0000:FEFB
- After: 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:63:0000:0000:FEFB
Rule 2: If two or more blocks contain consecutive zeroes, omit them all and replace with double colon sign ::, such as (6th and 7th block)
- Before: 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:63:0000:0000:FEFB
- After: 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:63::FEFB
Rule 3: Consecutive blocks of zeroes can be replaced only once by :: so if there are still blocks of zeroes in the address, they can be shrunk down to a single zero, such as (2nd block):
- Before: 20D1:0000:3238:DFE1:63::FEFB
- After: 20D1:0:3238:DFE1:63::FEFB
IPv6 Address Shortening | How to write IPv6 Address in short form:
Advantages of IPv6 Address
- IPv6 provides benefits such as increased address space and security improvements. Some other benefits and uses of IPv6 are given as follows:
- It supports the features of the security protocol such as IPSec to provide secure communication over the Internet.
- It provides a way to change addresses that are assigned to the hosts for maintaining address assignment within a site.
- It provides globally unicast addressing removes the need for NAT/PAT
- IPv6 address assignment allows easier renumbering, dynamic allocation, and recovery of addresses.
- The IPv6 header improves several things compared to IPv4. In IPv6, routers do not recalculate a header checksum for every packet, reducing overhead per packet.
- IPv6 has many tools to help with the transition from IPv4 to IPv6
