In this chapter, you will learn how to work with IPv6 and address manipulation with Python through practical tasks such as determining the IP address of your own computer and looking up other computers. Also, we will review the IPv6 protocol and standard Python libraries for IPv6 address manipulation. We will study three third-party libraries, ipaddress, netifaces, and netaddr, for working with IPv6 and address manipulation with Python. Finally, we will review the socket module for implementing the client-server application for sending messages.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Learning about and understanding the IPv6 protocol
• Creating an echo client and server with IPv6
• Understanding the netifaces module that allows checking of IPv6 support on your network
• The netaddr module as a network-address manipulation library for Python
• Understanding the ipaddress module as an IPv4 and IPv6 manipulation library