An AAAA record, also called a "Quad-A record," is a type of DNS record used to map a domain name to an IPv6 address. While A records (IPv4 addresses) are used to translate domain names to IPv4 addresses, AAAA records are used to translate domain names to IPv6 addresses.
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the successor to IPv4 and is designed to solve the depletion of available IPv4 addresses and provide more unique IP addresses for the growing number of devices connected to the Internet.
A typical AAAA record looks like the following:
yourdomain.com. IN AAAA 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334- "yourdomain.com" is the domain for which the AAAA record is specified.
- "IN" stands for Internet and indicates that this is an Internet-related DNS record.
- "AAAA" is the record type that specifies that this is an IPv6 address record.
- "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334" is the IPv6 address used to translate the domain name into a unique address.
Like A records, AAAA records are used to convert DNS lookups into IP addresses, but in this case they are IPv6 addresses. IPv6 addresses have a different notation and are much longer than IPv4 addresses because they contain 128 bits.
If you have a website or service that is IPv6-compatible, you need to set AAAA records to enable reachability over IPv6. It helps users with IPv6 connections to access your services without problems. In addition to configuring AAAA records, you also need to ensure that your server and network infrastructure are suitable for IPv6 traffic.