Storing IPv6 IPs in MySQL

Intro to IPv6:
ipv6.l.google.com has IPv6 address 2001:4860:0:2001::68
2001:4860:0:2001::68 is short notation for:
2001:4860:0000:2001:0000:0000:0000:0068

IPv6 is 128 bit. There are 2^128 IPv6 IPs. That’s 340 undecillion.

I have a whole lot more detail on what IPv6 is, saving that for a later presentation, let’s jump to something fun. This is what I need your help with. What are the considerations you have to make when developing your applications for IPv6? Here’s one:

Imagine you want to store a list of IPv6’s in a MySQL table. Maybe this is a list of IPs allowed to connect to your application, or maybe it’s a list of IP to server assignments.

IPv6 is 128 bit. This is larger than will fit in any single MySQL numeric data type. (Note: postgres has ip/netmask data types and functions to do calculations on them. It will also listen on the IPv6 network stack, MySQL won’t. But, that’s another story. The challenge for now is, storing IPv6 IPs in MySQL)

Read moreStoring IPv6 IPs in MySQL