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"Sir, please type this into your browser to get to the router web interface: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. I repeat 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334."

"Server IP address could not be found."

5 minutes later...

"Now could you please tell me the IPs of all connected devices?"

Customer hangs up and cancels his subscription.

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Wasn't a similar problem solved by services like URL shorteners? I had to work occasional technical service for products where I was one of the embedded engineers and I leaned heavily on bit.ly at the time to get URLs back and forth from customers and it worked exceedingly well.

So, with that in mind, what would be the major drawbacks to IPv6 address shorteners? You'll always have a certain class of issues such as transcription errors, of course.

Problem with URL shorteners is ones that use characters, especially of varying cases. Relaying letters across a telephone sucks, I often resort to NATO codes, and now you'll have to distinguish capitalization.

Yeah, actually I guess that I was spoiled in that regard. I worked for an RF company when I had that experience and, also having a military background myself, the NATO phonetics were used naturally when communicating with our customers.

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