Address Representation

IPv6 addresses consist of 8 groups of 16-bit hexadecimal values separated by colons (:). The IPv6 address format is as follows:




aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa

aaaa is a 16-bit hexadecimal value, and a is a 4-bit hexadecimal value. Following is an example of an actual IPv6 address:



3FFE:0000:0000:0001:0200:F8FF:FE75:50DF

You can omit the leading zeros, as shown:



3FFE:0:0:1:200:F8FF:FE75:50DF

You can compress 16-bit groups of zeros to "::", as shown here, but only once per address:



3FFE::1:200:F8FF:FE75:50DF