What Is an AAAA Record and How Do You Add One to Your Domain?

An AAAA record points your domain or subdomain to a server's IPv6 address, the same job an A record does for an IPv4 address. If your hosting server has an IPv6 address, adding an AAAA record lets visitors on IPv6-only networks reach your website directly.

A Record vs AAAA Record

Every website needs at least one address record so browsers know where to send traffic. There are two kinds:

• An A record points to an IPv4 address, the traditional four-number format (e.g. 192.0.2.10). Almost every domain has one.
• An AAAA record points to an IPv6 address, a longer format written in hexadecimal groups separated by colons (e.g. 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334). It only matters if your server actually has an IPv6 address assigned to it.

Most shared hosting accounts run on IPv4 only. Before adding an AAAA record, confirm your hosting server has an IPv6 address, either in your account details or by asking support. Pointing an AAAA record at the wrong address, or leaving it in place after a server change, can make your website unreachable for visitors on IPv6 networks even though it still works fine for everyone else.

Do You Need One?

You need an AAAA record if:

• Your hosting provider has assigned an IPv6 address to your account, and
• You want visitors on networks that use IPv6 (increasingly common on mobile data connections) to be able to reach your site over IPv6 as well as IPv4.

If your server only has an IPv4 address, you don't need an AAAA record. Your website keeps working normally for every visitor through the A record alone, since IPv6-capable networks automatically fall back to IPv4 when no AAAA record exists.

How to Add an AAAA Record

The steps are similar to adding any other DNS record. Only the record type and the value you enter are different.

In cPanel

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Under the Domains section, click Zone Editor.
3. Find the domain you want to update and click Manage.
4. Click Add Record and choose AAAA Record from the record type options.
5. Enter the subdomain (or leave it as your main domain), paste in the IPv6 address your host gave you, and set the TTL (14400 seconds, or 4 hours, is a reasonable default).
6. Click Add Record to save.

In DirectAdmin

1. Log in to your DirectAdmin account.
2. Click DNS Management (sometimes listed as DNS Administration).
3. Select the domain you want to update.
4. Choose AAAA as the record type.
5. Enter the subdomain (or leave it blank for the main domain), paste in the IPv6 address, and set the TTL.
6. Click Add Record (or Save) to apply the change.

Once saved, the record needs time to propagate before it's visible everywhere, just like any other DNS change.

For a refresher on editing other record types, see How to Add or Edit a DNS Record (A, CNAME, MX, TXT).