-
An IPv6 address
-
Nothing; it's not a real record
-
An address-to-name translation (IP to domain name)
-
Domain ownership information
EXPLANATION
An
AAAA record maps a domain name to the IP address
(Version 6) of the computer hosting the domain. An AAAA record is used
to find the IP address of a computer connected to the internet from a
name.
The AAAA record is conceptually similar to the
A record, but it allows you to specify the IPv6 address of the server, rather than the IPv4.
AAAA records are
less common than A records,
however their popularity is rising along with the increased adoption of
IPv6 addresses. For example, all the DNSimple name servers are
assigned to an IPv6 address and can be queried via either IPv4 or IPv6.
As with the A records, you can use multiple AAAA records for the same
domain in order to provide redundancy. Multiple names could point to
the same address, in which case each would have its own AAAA record
pointing to that same IP address.
The DNS A record is specified by
RFC 3596.
The structure of an AAAA record follows the standard top-level format definition defined
RFC 1035. The RDATA section is composed of one single element:
address |
A 128 bit Internet address representing an IPv6 address |
Hosts that have multiple Internet addresses have multiple A records.
The canonical representation is:
AAAA <address>
where
<address>
is an IPv6 address and looks like
2400:cb00:2049:1::a29f:1804
.
In DNSimple, the AAAA record is represented by the following customizable elements:
Name |
The host name for the record without the domain name. This is
generally referred to as “subdomain”. We automatically append the domain
name. |
TTL |
The time-to-live in seconds. This is the amount of time the record is allowed to be cached by a resolver. |
Address |
The IPv6 address the AAAA record points to. |
Querying AAAA records
You can use
dig
to determine the AAAA record associated with a domain name. The result is contained in the
ANSWER
section. It contains the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), the remaining time-to-live (TTL), and the IP address.
$ dig AAAA ns1.dnsimple.com
; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> AAAA ns1.dnsimple.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52403
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ns1.dnsimple.com. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ns1.dnsimple.com. 1795 IN AAAA 2400:cb00:2049:1::a29f:1804
;; Query time: 47 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Fri Nov 02 19:20:40 CET 2018
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 73
Manage AAAA records
From the DNSimple record editor you can
add, remove, and update AAAA records.