IPv6 Address Types and Scopes

IPv6 changed how addresses target devices. It dropped IPv4’s broadcast entirely. Instead, IPv6 uses three main address types: unicast, multicast, and anycast.

Each defines how many destinations a packet reaches, and addresses also carry a scope describing how far they are valid.

Unicast identifies a single interface; a packet sent to a unicast address goes to exactly one device. This is the everyday address type, like an IPv4 host address.

Most addresses you assign and use are unicast, whether for browsing, file transfer, or any one-to-one communication.