Introducing neso.au– Neptune's dedicated subscriber DNS zone

Self serve PTR and A/AAAA records in your subscriber portal

From the "DNS Records" section of the portal, you can now assign your own A and AAAA records to the IP addresses of your service. A records resolve domain names to IPv4 addresses, while AAAA records provide the same functionality for IPv6. With this system, the records are provisioned within seconds of your request, and are created under our dedicated subscriber DNS zone — neso.au. Neso is the name of Neptune's most distant moon, and just like its namesake, this feature is uniquely ours.

This feature also supports reverse DNS (PTR) records for both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This lets you configure PTR records using your own domain name, giving you professional-grade hostname mapping, improved email deliverability for self managed mail exchanges, as well as better diagnostics and service identification.

Using PTR Records

A PTR record (Pointer Record) is a type of DNS record used for reverse DNS lookups. While most DNS records map domain names to IP addresses (e.g., A or AAAA records), a PTR record does the opposite and maps an IP address back to a domain name.

One of the most common use cases is assigning a PTR record to a mail server. Having a valid PTR record that matches the A record of the mail server improves email deliverability, which is especially important if you're running a self-hosted mail server at home.

For example, if you have the IP address 103.252.194.224, you can assign a PTR record like so:

224.252.194.103.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR yourmail.example.com.

For IPv6, you can also set up a PTR record. For instance, for the address 2401:2520:1002:dc20::1, the corresponding PTR would be:

1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.c.d.2.0.0.1.0.2.5.2.1.0.4.2.ip6.arpa IN PTR yourmail.example.com.

Since Neptune Internet, as your ISP, has control over its assigned ip6.arpa and in-addr.arpa DNS zones, trust is established since we effectively vouch for your legitimacy as a human user.

A satisfying side effect of PTR records is that they'll identify your network hosts when running diagnostic tools such as traceroute or mtr.

traceroute 103.252.194.247
traceroute to 103.252.194.247 (103.252.194.247), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  bng1.sy1.neptune.net.au (160.250.145.1)  0.245 ms  0.197 ms  0.242 ms
 2  10.200.0.101 (10.200.0.101)  9.966 ms  9.922 ms  9.869 ms
 3  yourmail.example.com (103.252.194.247)  18.956 ms  18.905 ms  18.861 ms

Using AAAA (aka IPv6) DNS Records

AAAA records are designed for use with IPv6 addresses. The ability to add an AAAA record for your IPv6 address makes it easier to connect to that address externally, as you don't need to memorize a long IPv6 string. Instead, you can use a human-readable name that's easy to remember.

An AAAA record (Quad-A Record) maps a domain name to an IPv6 address, which uses a longer format with hexadecimal numbers separated by colons. For example, if a server has the IPv6 address 2401:2520:4002::3, you would create an AAAA record to point neso.au to that address.

test11.neso.au.         300     IN      AAAA    2401:2520:4002::3

Using A DNS Records

IPv4 has an analogous A record. An A record (Address Record) maps a domain name to an IPv4 address, which is written in the format of four decimal numbers separated by dots. For example, if the IPv4 address of a server is 103.252.194.233, you can create an A record to associate a domain like neso.au with that address.

test.neso.au.             263     IN      A       103.252.194.233