An IPv6 address consists of sixteen octets, shown using hexadecimal representation (two per octet) and using a colon character (:) after each pair of octets (16 bits also known as hextet) for readability, like this FE80:0000:0000:0000:0123:4567:89AB:CDEF. If two or more consecutive octets equal zero they may be replaced by two following colon characters (::) but this can be used only once in a given IPv6 address to avoid ambiguity. The previously given IPv6 address can thus also be written as FE80::0123:4567:89AB:CDEF. In addition leading zeroes may also be omitted as they are not significant bits in the address. Applying this to the previous example mentioned will result in an IPv6 address of FE80::123:4567:89AB:CDEF.