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Show HN: Octet Zone – Write IPv6 addresses in IPv4-style octet notation (octet.zone)
4 points by jangxx 871 days ago
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.