Last time, I talked about zone IDs and unique local IPv6 unicast addresses. Today, I will introduce some special addresses. In practice, usually only the networking guys really have to deal with these addresses. But as a Windows admin, you should have at least heard of the terms.
Unspecified address
The IPv6 unspecified address is specified as “0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0″ (or “::” if you have a sense for mathematical beauty). I think, this naming convention is somewhat funny. It reminds me of the “unspeakable word.” But there is also some sense in this because applications use the unspecified address as a variable for, well, an unspecified address. I guess, you won't see this address often, just like you didn't have many encounters with the unspecified IPv4 address 0.0.0.0. Note that you can't assign this address to an interface, which also makes sense because then you would specify it, which is strictly forbidden.
… read more of IPv6 tutorial - Part 8: Special addresses
Author: Michael Pietroforte
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