Show HN: Octet Zone – Write IPv6 addresses in IPv4-style octet notation

4 points by jangxx 2 years ago · 0 comments · 1 min read

Have you ever asked yourself the question if it would be nice to write IPv6 addresses in decimal octets instead of hexadecimal groups of 16-bits before? No? Well, now you can do it anyway.

I read a comment on here recently about how people always ask why IPv6 is not like IPv4 but with more octets. That gave me the idea to write a little DNS server that dynamically resolves an address like

38.6.40.0.2.32.0.1.2.72.24.147.37.200.25.70.octet.zone

to

2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946 (example.com)

Is this useful or more readable? I don't think so, but I still think it's interesting to see an IPv6 address written out like this. The server also has some convenience features like supporting the :: shorthand in IPv6 by adding an underscore as one of the subdomains. This means that - for example - the address

32.1.72.96.72.96._.136.136.octet.zone

resolves to

2001:4860:4860::8888 (Google DNS)

The website also has a little conversion tool so you don't have to do the hex -> decimal conversion yourself.

This is not really a serious endeavor and more of a little toy project to get started with Rust, but it was nonetheless fun to work on.

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