Addressing the Ipv6 way

ipv4 may be exhausted sometime by 2009 !! US gov has mandated all Federal agencies to implement ipv6 by 2008.

ipv4 was 32 bit; kinda 172.16.0.24
in contrast ipv6 is of 128 bits, that allows 3.4*10^38.

Normally written as eight groups of 4 hex digits each separated by colons like ->
4580:0f7a:0000:0000:0000:0000:562a:6bf7

complicated huh !!

Fortunately they can be condensed by eliminating zeros.
Two rules for condensing
1. A series of 4 zeros can be replaced by 2 colons and there can be only 1 set of :: in an address !
2. Second rule states that leading zeros in a group can be omitted. What this means is that if a block of four numbers starts with 0, the 0 can be removed leaving just 3 numbers in the block. This process can be continued till a single zero LEFT on the extreme left. The recursive WAY hee hee.

a sample demonstration
----------------------------
4580:0f7a:0000:0000:0000:0000:562a:6bf7
4580:f7a:000:000:000:000:562a:6bf7
4580:f7a:00:00:00:00:562a:6bf7
4580:f7a:0:0:0:0:562a:6bf7

Finally applying rule 1
we can merge the 4 consecutive 0's to :: thus making it
4580:f7a::562a:6bf7

I hope that was simple enough!