You're more than welcome to represent an IPv6 address in some other format. That's just a implementation detail in the UI. You don't need a new wire protocol to

You're more than welcome to represent an IPv6 address in some other format. That's just a implementation detail in the UI. You don't need a new wire protocol to do that. (There's already at least 4 different ways you can write an IPv4 address, and your OS is happy to accept any of them.)