Starting with Elasticsearch 5.0, the ip field will support indexing IPv6 addresses, a feature that has been long requested due to the previous inefficiencies in indexing such addresses. Earlier methods either indexed them as sortable strings, which hindered range performance, or used multiple levels of precision, increasing index size and slowing indexing speed. The introduction of Lucene 6's multi-dimensional points allows efficient indexing of numerics up to 128 bits by dynamically computing ranges based on data, reducing index bloat and improving indexing speed. This advancement enables IPv6 support on all new indexes post-upgrade, with IPv4 addresses being internally represented as IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, thus maintaining efficient disk usage through improved compression.