Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.

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IPv6: frequently asked questions

Here are answers to some common questions about IPv6.

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Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a set of protocols that computers use to exchange information over the Internet and over home and business networks. IPv6 allows for many more IP addresses to be assigned than IPv4 did. IPv6 is supported in this version of Windows.

An IPv6 address has eight groups of hexadecimal characters (the numbers 0–9 and the letters A–H) separated by colons—for example, 3ffe:ffff:0000:2f3b:02aa:00ff:fe28:9c5a. The leading zeroes in a section can be suppressed—for example, 3ffe:ffff:0:2f3b:2aa:ff:fe28:9c5a.

A double colon indicates that part of the address containing only zeroes has been compressed, to help make the address shorter. For example, this IPv6 address: fe80:0:0:0:2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2 could be written like this: fe80::2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2.

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