DNS Enhancements for IPv6

In RFC 1886, a new DNS resource record type, AAAA (also known as "quad A"), is used for resolving a fully qualified domain name to an IPv6 address. AAAA records use the DNS record type of 28. AAAA records are comparable to the host address (A) resource records used for IPv4 name resolution. The resource record type is named AAAA because 128-bit IPv6 addresses are four times longer than 32-bit IPv4 addresses.

The AAAA resource record in a typical DNS database file has the following structure:

Name IN AAAA Address

Where Name is the fully qualified domain name and Address is the IPv6 address associated with the name. The following is an example of an AAAA resource record:

host1.agni2k3.com IN AAAA FEC0::1:2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C

RFC 1886 also describes the IP6.INT domain created for IPv6 reverse queries. Also called pointer queries, reverse queries determine a host name based on the address. To create the namespace for reverse queries, each hexadecimal digit in the fully expressed 32-digit IPv6 address becomes a separate level in the reverse domain hierarchy in inverse order. For example, the reverse lookup domain name for the address FEC0::1:2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C (fully expressed as FEC0:0000:0000:0001:02AA:00FF:FE3F:2A1C) is C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.INT. An example pointer (PTR) record is the following :

C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.INT.

IN PTR host1.agni2k3.com

The DNS support defined in RFC 1886 is a simple way to both map host names to IPv6 addresses and provide reverse name resolution. It is a direct translation of IPv4 name and reverse name resolution techniques to IPv6.