AAAA record

Q: What is a AAAA record?

Maps a domain name to an IPv6 address. The AAAA record (read "quad A") points a hostname at an IPv6 address. It mirrors the A record but uses the 128-bit IPv6 address space. Modern services should publish both A and AAAA records.

Maps a domain name to an IPv6 address.

What is a AAAA record?

The AAAA record (read "quad A") points a hostname at an IPv6 address. It mirrors the A record but uses the 128-bit IPv6 address space. Modern services should publish both A and AAAA records.

Example zone-file entry

example.com.    300    IN    AAAA    2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946

Common use cases

▸Dual-stack web servers reachable over both IPv4 and IPv6.
▸Mobile carrier networks that are IPv6-only — clients need AAAA to reach you.
▸Future-proofing apex records before IPv4 reachability is reduced.
▸CDN edge nodes that announce IPv6 directly.

Common gotchas

Happy Eyeballs (RFC 8305) lets browsers try v6 then fall back to v4. A broken AAAA (host listed but not reachable) can introduce noticeable load delay before the v4 fallback kicks in — always verify reachability after publishing.

Look up DNS records →

Related record types

A record

Maps a domain name to an IPv4 address.

CNAME record

Aliases one hostname to another — the resolver follows it transparently.

CAA record

Certificate Authority Authorization — declares which CAs are allowed to issue certs for your domain.