The initial bits of an IPv6 address (these are identical for all hosts in a network) form the networks prefix. A network or subnet using the IPv6 protocol is denoted as a contiguous group of IPv6 addresses whose size must be a power of two. The IPv6 networks are denoted by Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) notation. The URL for the above address will be of the form: Therefore, the following IPv6 addresses are similar and equally valid:

IPv6 addresses are denoted by eight groups of hexadecimal quartets separated by colons in between them.įollowing is an example of a valid IPv6 address: 2002:cdba:0000:0000:0000:0000:3257:9652Īny four-digit group of zeroes within an IPv6 address may be reduced to a single zero or altogether omitted. An IPv6 packet destined for an Anycast address is delivered to one of the interfaces identified by the address. An IPv6 packet delivered to a Multicast address is delivered to the multiple interfaces.ģ) Anycast addresses: Anycast addresses act as identifiers for a set of interfaces that may belong to the different nodes. An IPv6 packet sent to a Unicast address is delivered to the interface identified by that address.Ģ) Multicast addresses: A Multicast address acts as an identifier for a group/set of interfaces that may belong to the different nodes. IPv6 addresses are classified into three categories:ġ) Unicast addresses: A Unicast address acts as an identifier for a single interface. With this enormous addressing space scheme, IPv6 can provide unique addresses to each and every device attached to the Internet. IPv6 supports 128 bit addressing space and can potentially support 2 ^ 128 or 3.4 x 10 ^ 38 unique IP addresses (as opposed to 32 bit addressing space of IPv4). The greatest benefit of IPv6 addressing over the previous used IPv4 addressing is the enormous addressing space that contains.

Convert mac address to ipv6 calculator