What is IPv6?

IPv6 is an Internet addressing system that is designed to replace IPv4. It works in a very similar way as IPv4 but offers some additional benefits. As the pool of available IPv4 addresses diminishes, there was a need to implement a protocol that offers a much larger pool of IP addresses to accommodate the ever-growing demand in the IP space. We continue to see an increase in the number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that are providing IPv6 connectivity. This means that you may already be using IPv6 and don’t even know it. Under the IPv6 protocol, domain names like noip.com are changed into IP addresses via DNS as usual, but instead of the IPv4 DNS record type A, IPv6 uses record type AAAA, often referred to as “Quad-A.” Because the adoption of IPv6 has been slow, many domains have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. An example for google.com can be found below:

IPv4 address for google.com is 127.217.11.174

IPv6 address for google.com is 2607:f8b0:4007:80d:0000:200e

Most operating systems are dual-stacked, meaning that they support both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously and the system will choose which address to access.

What’s New with our Protocol?

The changes we have made to our dynamic DNS compatibility protocol allow for both A and AAAA hostnames to be updated individually or dual-stacked. We have also added functionality to send IPv6 updates through IPv4 systems. By doing this, we have given developers the flexibility to offer Dynamic DNS services through their devices and software in whatever format best meets their use case. Please check out our updated integration page or contact our integration specialists to find out more about our Dynamic DNS API and how it now supports IPv6. Get started now by offering your customers DDNS with full support for A and AAAA records using our dynamic DNS API!

Need IP Detection?

If you are looking to use our dynamic DNS compatibility protocol on devices not connected directly to the internet (i.e., devices behind NAT), the router may be assigning IP addresses locally. These DHCP events may occur without the router external IP address actually changing. In this case, we have provided an IP detection service that can be implemented to check for IP address changes on these devices to keep them connected to a hostname. To find out more, please visit our IP Detection Service page.