[Moose4]

So how are IP addresses represented in v6? No more 255.255.255.255-style addresses?

}:-)4

[krb]

I guess they are 255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255-style addresses :-)

[D. Brian Carter]

I'm sure one of the trusty techies will be around to verify, but I'd suspect it will be just like that, only longer.

[Michael Barnes]

Example IPv6 addr:

3ffe:3700:402:0:210:a4ff:fe12:fec4

[tortoise]

So how are IP addresses represented in v6? No more 255.255.255.255-style addresses?

The addressing will be similar, but addresses won't be globally resolved in the way they are in IPv4. While the address space is MUCH larger, actually addressing will be much less in practice.

IIRC (and I am too lazy to look it up), IPv6 effectively uses a 48-bit "address" out of the 128-bit space, so you are only adding two octets to the current IPv4 addresses.

[Liberal Classic]

I guess you'll have to type

 255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255 

or something now. But seriously, in the early 90s running out of address space was thought to be a serious problem. Since then private networks and address translation have served to extend the life of the current 32-bit address.

The real problem came about because back in the day of a couple of thousand hosts on the Arpanet sixteen million addresses seemed "nearly infinite." Class-B blocks of addresses were given out for birthdays and in Christmas stockings, and now there are a lot of colleges and businesses who still have class-B blocks of addresses they don't need. Many companies and colleges still assign real-world addresses to their internally firewalled computers even if they aren't visible to the outside world.

Version 6 of the internet protocol will be a long time in adoption and will come in by way of the back-end, and won't be noticed by the end user.