Check DNS AAAA Records (IPv6)

A AAAA record (pronounced "quad A") is a DNS record that maps a domain name to an IPv6 IP address. For example, the www.dnscheck.co AAAA record could map to the 2604:a880:800:10::7a1:b001 IPv6 address. The IPv4 equivalent of a AAAA record is an A record.

"AAAA record" is pronounced "quad A record".

AAAA records are defined in RFC 3596.

DNS Check can monitor your AAAA records and notify you if they become unresolvable or start resolving to the wrong IP address.

Fields

Here are the fields that make up a AAAA record:

IPv6 Address Normalization

DNS Check automatically normalizes all IPv6 addresses to the canonical format defined in RFC 5952 by performing these transformations:

• Convert uppercase letters to lowercase (e.g., 2001:DB8::1 becomes 2001:db8::1)
• Remove leading zeros from each segment (e.g., 2001:0db8::0001 becomes 2001:db8::1)
• Compress the longest run of consecutive zero segments using :: (e.g., 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 becomes 2001:db8::1). A maximum of one sequence of zeros is compressed per address because compressing multiple sequences would create ambiguity about how many zeros were compressed in each sequence.

These normalized addresses are easier for humans to read and provide a consistent representation that computers can use to compare IPv6 addresses more easily.

You can enter IPv6 addresses into DNS Check using any valid format. DNS Check will automatically normalize the addresses for you and store them in that standard format. When checking your DNS records, DNS Check also normalizes the responses from your nameservers before comparing them to your expected values.

DNS Zone File Examples

Here's an example of how a AAAA record looks in a DNS zone file:

; Name           Type  Address
www.dnscheck.co. AAAA  2604:a880:800:10::7a1:b001

The Name ends in a period in the above example, so it's a fully qualified domain name.

Alternatively, you can create a AAAA record that's relative to the zone file's $ORIGIN. Here's an example of how to use this technique to define the same record as in the previous example:

$ORIGIN dnscheck.co.
; Name           Type  Address
www              AAAA  2604:a880:800:10::7a1:b001

Additional Resources

• RFC 3596 - section 2 (New resource record definition and domain) defines AAAA records.
• RFC 5952 - defines the format used for AAAA records.

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