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Network Dictionary – Chazwazza

5th September 2010 By 15 Comments

chazwazza

Term used to describe each set of 16 bits (orone word, two bytes, four nibbles) in an IPv6 address. Similar to an octet in IPv4, it’s a useful shorthand term ofr each of the eight segments in an IPv6 address.

For example:

The last chazwazza should be “dead” not “beef”. The full address is 4600:6703:0:f::dead.

Updated – Seriously

There doesn’t appear to be a real name for the IPv6 address segments and my suggestion is “chunk” as in, each section of an IPv6 address is a chunk, and there are eight chunks in an IPv6 address.

Kurt Bales contacted me and said:

One of the things that annoys me is that there isn’t an accepted name for the 16-bit fields. In IPv4 we call the groupings octets for obvious reasons, there is no accepted name in v6. This usually results in calling them by various names and spending far longer trying to describe them than you do actually working on IPv6 ;)

I do a bit of IPv6 consulting and so a colleague (Nathan Ward @ Braintrust) and I decided to use our own name to end the battle once and for all – Chazwazza! (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chazwazza)

This has certainly streamlined conversations, and we have both used it several times in presentations at various conferences. It started off as an in joke, and then other people started using the term as well.

PS – The name comes from an episode of The Simpsons when they were debating about what to call something.

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://www.mtin.net/blog Justin Wilson

    Even though a cool name, I will be surprised if it catches on. I bet someone will come up with a less “childish” name.

  • http://packetpushers.net Ethan Banks

    The last time I was part of a joke that coined a term, it turned into hats, buttons, logos, and a Wikipedia page. With the Internet and a few co-conspirators, anything is possible.

    • http://www.network-janitor.net Kurt Bales

      Of course! I have learnt that techs have a twisted sense of humour and it always comes out in the interesting acronyms used.

      Sometimes its like “I see what you did there, but did you pick the acronym and work backwards?”

      K.

  • http://www.commandinformation.com/blog Jeremy Duncan

    You do realize that this is the name of a social network that’s about to come out right? Might want to work on something else…

    http://chazwazza.com

    • http://www.network-janitor.net Kurt Bales

      Ive seen it used in a bunch of locations, especially given where it came from.

      This time last year, it was used in a lot less places publicly ;)

  • http://aconaway.com Aaron

    We have them in America. We call them bullfrogs.

  • http://blog.quux.de Jens Link

    Well some people are working on formalising this idea: ;-)

    http://etherpad.netluchs.de/Mp73vvBvW5

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      Jens

      That looks awesome, although “chazwazza” was kind of meant to be humourous.

      I would suggest using the work “chunk” instead. As in, “there are eight chunks in an IPv6 address”.

      That seems natural to me.

      greg

      • http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/ Lutz Donnerhacke

        We moved a huge step foreward and waiting for serious input … (You might write a separat blog post on this, because your blog started the discussion and finally put the people together to start the serious work)

        http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-denog-v6ops-addresspartnaming

  • Bill

    In C/C++ a 16-bit integer is generally referred to as a ‘short’ (32-bits are regular ints and 64-bit ints are ‘long’). So maybe that would be the most appropriate term, though chunk probably works well too.

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  • Greg Keys

    If an 8 bit “chunk” is an octet, then why not a “hextet”?

    • Steve

      Because that would be a six bit chunk, not a sixteen bit chunk. Better, as someone above mentioned, henadectet.

  • Jon

    They are referred to as Quads.

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