IPv6 supported address formats

IPv6 in Service Manager supports the following IP address formats.

Text representation

Service Manager supports text representation of IPv6 formats as defined in RFC 4291 (IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture).

IPv6 addresses are 128-bit identifiers for interfaces and sets of interfaces. In general, the standard IPv6 address is x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x where each xrepresents 1 to 4 hexadecimal digits, as shown in the following example:

2001:DB8:0:0:8:800:200C:417A

It is not necessary to specify the leading zeros of an individual field. However, you must have at least one hexadecimal character in each field. You can use :: to represent one or more groups of 16 bits of zeros to avoid specifying the entire IPv6 address. However, you can only use the :: one time. The :: may also be used to compress the leading or trailing zeros of the IPv6 address. For example, the following two IPv6 addresses are equivalent:

FF01:0:0:0:0:0:0:101

FF01::101

Address representation in mixed IPv4/IPv6 environments

According to the RFC 4291 (IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture) standard, the following format is used to handle mixed IPv4/IPv6 environments:

x:x:x:x:x:x:d.d.d.d

In this case, the xs are placeholders for the hexadecimal values of the six high-order 16-bit pieces of the address, and the ds are the decimal values of the four low-order 8-bit pieces of the address, which is the standard IPv4 representation. Therefore, you can specify an old IPv4 address in a mixed IPv4/IPv6 environment in either of the following, equivalent ways:

0:0:0:0:0:0:13.1.68.3

::13.1.68.3  //Uses :: to minimize the leading zeros of the IPv6 address.

IPv6 addresses with a port number

To specify an IPv6 address together with a port number, enclose the IPv6 address in brackets as shown in the following example:

[2001:db8::1]:80