IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) was developed to overcome the limitations of IPv4, primarily addressing the issue of limited IP addresses. Unlike IPv4, which uses a 32-bit address format, IPv6 utilizes a 128-bit hexadecimal address, significantly expanding the number of available IPs. An IPv6 address is represented in eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334).