A Record: What is it? How is it used?

A (Address) Record

An A record tells a DNS server what specific IP address to map for a host name. It is the most common type of DNS record. An A record is typically used to direct your domain name, for example www.exampledomainname.com, to a web server. These host records can be used to direct your domain name to your web server’s IP address (via A or AAAA records)

Example A record format: 216.239.38.21

AAAA (IPv6 Address) Record

An AAAA (or “quad-A”) record is similar to an A record, except that it maps a hostname to an IPv6 address. An A record specifies an IPv4 address, which is currently the dominant Internet Protocol version. In 1998 the IETF designated IPv6 as the successor to version 4 mainly for its much larger amount of available addresses, which provides flexibility in allocated addresses and routing traffic and prevents address exhaustion as more and more hosts are connecting to the Internet and available IPv4 addresses are running out.

IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, where each group is separated by a colon.

Example IPv6 format: 2006:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334