IPv6, short for Internet Protocol version 6, is the successor to IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) and is designed to overcome the limitations of IPv4, primarily the exhaustion of available IP addresses.
The key new features of IPv6 are:
Expanded address space
Hexadecimal notation
What is the successor of IPv4?
IPv6 Address Space
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) has a significantly larger address space compared to its predecessor, IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4).
IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses which means there are 2^128 (about 340 undecillion) possible unique IPv6 addresses.
IP v6 addresses are made up of bits.
IPv6 Addressing
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
IPv6 addresses are typically represented in hexadecimal notation, separated by colons.
To simplify addresses, IPv6 allows for certain abbreviations, such as omitting leading zeros and using double colons (::) to represent consecutive groups of zeros. This is known is address compression.
For example:
Full IPv6 Address: 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0042
