As IPv6 deployment increases, there will be a dramatic increase in
the need to use IPv6 addresses in text. While the IPv6 address
architecture in Section 2.2 of RFC 4291 describes a flexible model
for text representation of an IPv6 address, this flexibility has been
causing problems for operators, system engineers, and users. This
document defines a canonical textual representation format. It does
not define a format for internal storage, such as within an
application or database. It is expected that the canonical format
will be followed by humans and systems when representing IPv6
addresses as text, but all implementations must accept and be able to
handle any legitimate RFC 4291 format. [STANDARDS-TRACK]