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IPv6 addressing

128 bits sounds terrifying until you learn the two shortening rules: drop leading zeros, and collapse one run of zero-groups to ::. Suddenly 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 is just 2001:db8::1, and v6 addresses become easier to reason about than v4.

eight hex groups, mercifully shortened

The mental shift: LANs are always /64, there’s no broadcast, and devices happily hold several addresses at once. Address scarcity (the anxiety that shaped everything in v4) simply stops existing.