AAAA Records

AAAA Records play a growingly important role in the conversion of hostnames to IP addresses. Learn why AAAA records are expected to gradually replace A records as the basic DNS resolution record.

Table of Contents:

• AAAA Records Overview
• What are AAAA records?
• Custom AAAA records advantages
• AAAA record example
• How to manage custom AAAA records

AAAA Records Overview

When talking about domain name management it would be relevant to mention the importance of the Domain Name System for domain names' online availability and behavior. With the development of DNS technologies it has become possible for users to control their domains through specific DNS records.

An important function of DNS< is the DNS resolution process, including the translation of hostnames to their corresponding IP addresses. There are currently two DNS record types responsible for the conversion process - A records and AAAA records.

What are AAAA records

Both the A record and the AAAA record play an important part during the DNS resolution process. The main difference between them is that an A record is responsible for translating a hostname to its corresponding IPv4 address, while the AAAA record is working for specifying the IPv6 address for a certain host.

In this light, the A record is understandably much more used than the AAAA record, since IPv4 is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version. However, it holds a great potential, given the future possibility for IPv6 to become the new IP address system.

Custom AAAA records advantages

One of the greatest advantages of AAAA records over A records is that they store 128-bit IP addresses (as compared to the 32 bits long IPv4 addresses stored in the A records), which is allowed only in the IPv6 system. Since with the expansion of the Internet, requiring new large volumes of new IP addresses to be created, the capacity of the IPv4 system has almost been reached, it is clear that IPv4 will be replaced by IPv6 and the A records by the AAAA records, respectively.

The IPv6 addresses stored in AAAA records contain hexadecimal numbers separated by colons (:) at every segment, which contains four digits.

AAAA record example

Since it is possible for a sequence of zero value segments to be contained within an AAAA record, the "::" symbol has been accepted to be used instead. Also for the sake of convenience, it is recommended that leading zeros in a segment be omitted.

An example of an AAAA record with replacing symbols

How to manage custom AAAA records

Managing the AAAA records for your domain names is a snap through the Custom DNS Records section of the NTC Hosting Control Panel coming with all plans on this website. From there you can create a new AAAA record or modify your existing one through a user-friendly interface. To create a new record, simply select the domain you wish to apply it to, enter the necessary value and hit the action button. Editing an existing AAAA record is even easier! You can set as many AAAA records and apply as many updates as you wish!