Release Notes › Features › Support for IPv6 IP Addresses

Support for IPv6 IP Addresses

Previously, specification of IP Addresses was limited to IPv4 dotted decimal notation. With the current release, you can now specify IPv6 addresses in any IP Address field. IPv6 uses 128-bit IP addresses instead of the 32-bit addresses used by IPv4. Any policies that are based on the IP address version support IPv6 and IPv4.

You can use IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses or the traditional IPv6 format. The IPv4-mapped IPv6 address format allows the IPv4 address of an IPv4 node to be represented as an IPv6 address as follows:

• The preferred IPv6 form is written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits (x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x). Each x is one to four hexadecimal digits of the eight 16-bit pieces of the address.
• The IPv4-mapped IPv6 address, convenient in a mixed environment of IPv4 and IPv6 nodes is 0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:d.d.d.d, where each d is a decimal value of the address (IPv4 dotted decimal notation).

  Important! IPv4-compatible IPv6 addresses in the format 0:0:0:0:0:0:d.d.d.d are now deprecated, according to RFC 4291, because the current IPv6 transition mechanisms no longer use these addresses.

The following is a valid IPv6 address written in traditional format.

2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334

If one or more four-digit groups are 0000, the zeros can be omitted and replaced with two colons(::). Leading zeros in a group can also be omitted. The following example IP addresses are equivalent:

• 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:1428:57ab
• 2001:0db8::1428:57ab
• 2001:db8:0:0:0:0:1428:57ab
• 2001:db8::1428:57ab

If you are replacing IPv4 addresses with IPv4-mapped addresses, use the following examples as guidelines:

• 0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:192.168.2.128
• 0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:172.16.2.128

Alternatively, you can use the following compressed form:

• ::FFFF:192.168.2.128
• ::FFFF:172.16.2.128