Comtrol eCos - Manual (Page 536)

Chapter 38. TCP/IP Library Reference
getnameinfo(3) are recommended rather than the functions presented here.
The presentation format of an IPv6 address is given in [RFC1884 2.2]:
There are three conventional forms for representing IPv6 addresses as
text strings:
1. The preferred form is x:x:x:x:x:x:x:x, where the ’x’s are the hex-
adecimal values of the eight 16-bit pieces of the address. Exam-
ples:
FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210
1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A
Note that it is not necessary to write the leading zeros in an indi-
vidual field, but there must be at least one numeral in every field
(except for the case described in 2.).
2. Due to the method of allocating certain styles of IPv6 addresses, it
will be common for addresses to contain long strings of zero bits.
In order to make writing addresses
containing zero bits easier a special syntax is available to com-
press the zeros. The use of “::” indicates multiple groups of 16
bits of zeros. The “::” can only appear once in an address. The
“::” can also be used to compress the leading and/or trailing
zeros in an address.
For example the following addresses:
1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A a unicast address
FF01:0:0:0:0:0:0:43 a multicast address
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 the loopback address
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 the unspecified addresses
may be represented as:
1080::8:800:200C:417A a unicast address
FF01::43 a multicast address
::1 the loopback address
:: the unspecified addresses
3. An alternative form that is sometimes more convenient when dealing
with a mixed environment of IPv4 and IPv6 nodes is
x:x:x:x:x:x:d.d.d.d, where the ’x’s are the hexadecimal values of
the six high-order 16-bit pieces of the address, and the ’d’s are
the decimal values of the four low-order 8-bit pieces of the address
(standard IPv4 representation). Examples:
0:0:0:0:0:0:13.1.68.3
0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:129.144.52.38
or in compressed form:
::13.1.68.3
432