3.3. Operating

3.3. Operating

3.3.1. General Summary

When an operator sets an IPv6 address of a system as 2001:db8:0:0:1:0:0:1, the system may take the address and show the configuration result as 2001:DB8::1:0:0:1. Someone familiar with IPv6 address representation will know that the right address is set, but not everyone may understand this.

3.3.2. Customer Calls

When a customer calls to inquire about a suspected outage, IPv6 address representation should be handled with care. Not all customers are engineers, nor do they have a similar skill level in IPv6 technology. The network operations center will have to take extra steps to humanly parse the address to avoid having to explain to the customers that 2001:db8:0:1::1 is the same as 2001:db8::1:0:0:0:1. This is one thing that will never happen in IPv4 because IPv4 addresses cannot be abbreviated.

3.3.3. Abuse

Network abuse reports generally include the abusing IP address. This 'reporting' could take any shape or form of the flexible model. A team that handles network abuse must be able to tell the difference between a 2001:db8::1:0:1 and 2001:db8:1::0:1. Mistakes in the placement of the "::" will result in a critical situation. A system that handles these incidents should be able to handle any type of input and parse it in a correct manner. Also, incidents are reported over the phone. It is unnecessary to report if the letter is uppercase or lowercase. However, when a letter is spelled uppercase, people tend to specify that it is uppercase, which is unnecessary information.