IPV6 Address Formats
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- Last UpdatedApr 16, 2025
- 2 minute read
IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and are written in eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons, for example, 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. The hexadecimal digits are case-insensitive.
An IPv6 address can be abbreviated according to following rules:
- Leading zeroes within a 16-bit value may be omitted. For example, the address
fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329 may be written as fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329. - A single occurrence of any number of consecutive groups of zeroes within an address may be replaced by a double colon. For example, fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329 becomes fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329.
So the same IPv6 address can be represented in several different ways. For example, the following are all equivalent:
2001:db8:0:0:1:0:0:1 |
2001:0db8::1:0:0:1 |
2001:0db8:0:0:1:0:0:1 |
2001:db8:0:0:1::1 |
2001:db8::1:0:0:1 |
2001:db8:0000:0:1::1 |
2001:db8::0:1:0:0:1 |
2001:DB8:0:0:1::1 |
Whenever an IPv6 address is entered into SecureSphere, it is displayed in the "long" format once it has been saved. For example, when the IPv6 address as "2001:DB8::" is entered in the GUI and saved, it is then displayed as "2001:0DB8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000". This does not apply to impcfg
, where one of the short forms (not necessarily the shortest) of the address is used.
Note: SecureSphere is able to recognize the equivalence of these different forms of the same IPv6 address except in certain cases where the IPv6 address is treated as a character string, for example, in lookup datasets and in Threat Intelligence. |