Did you know that IP addresses (IPv4) can be written in shorter representations?

Did you know that IPv4 addresses can be written in shorter representations, like IPv6 addresses?

Everyone have seen form of IPv6 represented as “shorter form”:
Example from IPv6:

You can use our free tool ipv6-literal.com to convert these addresses to long form. The result is:

What admins / programmers usually do not know, is that the same principle applies to IPv4 addresses:

To test these, use built in ping command. I used ping in Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10, and the result addresses are:

As a bonus, you can try to ping other IP address representations:

Why it works this way? Because network funcions built into OS support a such behavior, for example:

Have a fun, and remember, that year of IPv6 is near.