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DNS-AID (DNS for AI Discovery)

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This page is about DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID), the Internet-Draft draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid, which publishes AI agents in SVCB records and uses _index._agents.<domain> as an entry point to an organisation's agent index. It is not Agent Identity and Discovery (AID), a separate specification with different authors that uses a single TXT record at _agent.<domain> (see AID vs DNS-AID). It is not MCP DNS discovery (draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery), which defines TXT records at _mcp.<domain> for MCP servers. And it is not A2A Agent Card discovery, which is a JSON file served over HTTPS at /.well-known/agent-card.json; a DNS-AID record can point to that file, but does not replace it.

Overview

DNS-AID proposes that an organisation publish each AI agent as an SVCB record in its own DNS zone, so another agent can look up the endpoint, protocol and capability pointers with an ordinary DNS query, without a central registry. A well-known _index._agents name points to an index of all the organisation's agents, and DNSSEC and DANE TLSA records can be added so that the answers and the TLS endpoint can be authenticated. The draft defines no new record types; it reuses SVCB and asks IANA to register new SvcParamKeys and labels. It began as the BANDAID draft in October 2025, was renamed DNS-AID in February 2026, and the reference implementation has since moved to a Linux Foundation project.

How it differs from neighbouring specs

The MCP draft itself keeps the two "AID" documents apart: "Two of them are called AID and they are different documents. [ AGENT-AID ] is "Agent Identity and Discovery", and [ DNS-AID ] is "DNS for AI Discovery"." [8] DNS-AID -02 does not cite the AID or MCP DNS drafts; it names MCP and A2A only as protocols carried in alpn.

Who uses it

All lookups were made over DNS-over-HTTPS (JSON API) to Google Public DNS (dns.google) and cross-checked with Cloudflare (cloudflare-dns.com) on 2026-10-29 across a fixed sample of 161 AI, developer, SaaS, and DNS-provider domains (1 published a DNS-AID index, ai.infoblox.com; a second zone, highvelocitynetworking.com, was found by following an SVCB target in ai.infoblox.com's records).

Both live zones differ from the -02 text in the same ways and match the reference implementation's naming (_<agent>._<protocol>._agents.<domain>): the index is a TXT record listing agents=name:protocol,..., not the SVCB pointer that -02 describes; agent records sit under _agents (almost all in SVCB ServiceMode) rather than at a primary agent-name.<domain> owner with AliasMode aliases; and capability/policy URLs are carried in private-use numeric keys (key65400, key65403) because the named keys are not yet registered. We found no DNS-AID index on infoblox.com, godaddy.com, telekom.de, amazon.com, aws.amazon.com, cloudflare.com, or dns-aid.org (all in the 161-domain sample).

Who reads it

These are vendor statements of support. None of them shows a production deployment.

Deutsche Telekom and Amazon staff co-author the draft, but we found no company statement of support. The reference implementation's discover command and the DNS-AID Looking Glass [11] are the only readers we could confirm; we found no AI platform documenting that it reads DNS-AID records.

Recent coverage

See also

References

  1. IETF Datatracker, DNS for AI Discovery, draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid (document page), checked 2026-10-29: "Active Internet-Draft (individual) Authors Jim Mozley, Nic Williams, Behcet Sarikaya, Roland Schott, Jeffrey Damick Last updated 2026-05-27" "B. Sarikaya Unaffiliated R. Schott Deutsche Telekom J. Damick Amazon 27 May 2026" "Stream state (No stream defined)" "This I-D is not endorsed by the IETF and has no formal standing in the IETF standards process." "Intended status: Standards Track" "RFC stream (None) Intended RFC status (None)" "Expires: 28 November 2026" "Replaces draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-bandaid" — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid/
  2. DNS-AID project site, DNS-AID (dns-aid.org), checked 2026-10-29: "Copyright © DNS-AID a Series of LF Projects, LLC" "DNS-AID is a naming convention on top of existing SVCB, TXT, and TLSA records." — https://www.dns-aid.org/
  3. J. Mozley, N. Williams (Infoblox, Inc.), B. Sarikaya (Unaffiliated), R. Schott (Deutsche Telekom), J. Damick (Amazon), DNS for AI Discovery, draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02, 2026-05-27, checked 2026-10-29: "This document introduces no new resource record types, opcodes, or response codes." "An SVCB record type query for _index._agents.example.com returns a pointer to an organization-specific registry of all agents." "The document standardizes an approach for publishing AI agents in the Domain Name System (DNS) so that other agents can discover them." "The mechanism uses Service Binding (SVCB) records for connectivity information and key meta data, a well known entry point using DNS-Based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) labels into an organization's agent index" "This is the form publishers SHOULD support and the form requestors MUST try first." "The labels _index._agents have been chosen as DNS-SD labels with the intent of registering them with IANA, as it is not possible to register a generic name such as agent-index." "Operators MAY publish the same agent under an _agents.example.com inventory leaf (for organizations that prefer a single containing prefix for their agents) or under a canonical DNS-SD label (so off- the-shelf DNS-SD clients can enumerate). In these cases SVCB AliasMode MUST be used to point at the primary owner." "The records SHOULD be DNSSEC-signed [RFC9364] for data origin authentication and data integrity, if TLSA records are used they MUST be signed" "DNS-AID is deployable without DNSSEC, but the authenticity guarantees it offers depend on a validated path from the root to the zone of interest." "This is not considered desirable as SVCB records are specifically design for service discovery, see [RFC9460]." "well-known -- The well-known URI path as as described in [RFC8615] e.g. /.well-known/agent-card.json." "The numeric SvcParamKey values are deferred to IANA assignment; the names below are the strings carried in zonefile presentation form per [RFC9460], Section 2.1." "The exact spelling of each identifier is to be confirmed with the maintainers of the respective protocols; the entries above are placeholders." — https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02.txt
  4. IETF Datatracker, draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid, history, checked 2026-10-29: "draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02 (2026-05-27) draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-01 (2026-03-02) draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-00 (2026-02-24) draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-bandaid-00 (2025-10-16)" — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid/history/
  5. IETF Datatracker, draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-bandaid (predecessor), checked 2026-10-29: "Replaced Internet-Draft (individual) Expired & archived Authors Jim Mozley, Nic Williams, Behcet Sarikaya, Roland Schott Last updated 2025-10-16 Replaced by draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid" — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-bandaid/
  6. IETF Datatracker, draft-nemethi-dawn-aid (document page), checked 2026-10-29: "Active Internet-Draft (individual) Author Balazs Nemethi Last updated 2026-09-02" — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nemethi-dawn-aid/
  7. IETF Datatracker, draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery (document page), checked 2026-10-29: "Active Internet-Draft (individual) Author Blake Morrison Last updated 2026-10-21" — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery/
  8. B. Morrison (Alter Meridian Pty Ltd), Discovery of Model Context Protocol Servers via DNS TXT Records, draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery-09, checked 2026-10-29: "Intended Status: Informational Expires: 24 April 2027 Author: B. Morrison Alter Meridian Pty Ltd" "Three TXT records are defined." "_mcp.<domain> advertises an MCP server's endpoint URL, agent protocol family, transport binding, cryptographic identity, and capability profile." — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery-09
  9. A2A Protocol, Agent Discovery, checked 2026-10-29: "The standard path is https://{agent-server-domain}/.well-known/agent-card.json, following the principles of RFC 8615." — https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/topics/agent-discovery/
  10. B. Nemethi, Agent Identity and Discovery (AID), draft-nemethi-dawn-aid-00, checked 2026-10-29: "An AID client queries a DNS TXT record at the well-known subdomain _agent.<domain> and learns the service endpoint URI, protocol token, authentication hint, and optional metadata for that agent." — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-nemethi-dawn-aid-00
  11. DNS-AID project site, Looking Glass, checked 2026-10-29: "Try a known‑good zone: ai.infoblox.com" — https://www.dns-aid.org/looking-glass/
  12. dns-aid/dns-aid-core, README.md (GitHub), checked 2026-10-29: "Reference implementation for IETF draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02" "This repository provides a reference implementation. This project does not define the specification. The IETF draft is authoritative." — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dns-aid/dns-aid-core/main/README.md
  13. GitHub REST API, repository dns-aid/dns-aid-core, checked 2026-10-29: "dns-aid/dns-aid-core" — https://api.github.com/repos/dns-aid/dns-aid-core
  14. GitHub REST API, releases of dns-aid/dns-aid-core/releases, checked 2026-10-29: "v0.28.1" — https://api.github.com/repos/dns-aid/dns-aid-core/releases
  15. PyPI JSON API, 0.28.1/json (dns-aid 0.28.1), checked 2026-10-29: "0.28.1" — https://pypi.org/pypi/dns-aid/0.28.1/json
  16. Infoblox, Infoblox and GoDaddy Support Open Standards for AI Agent Discovery, Identity and Verification, 2026-05-14, checked 2026-10-29: "SANTA CLARA, Calif. and TEMPE, Ariz., May 14, 2026" "Infoblox is advancing DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID), an open, interoperable approach for agent discovery built on existing Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure." "DNS-AID is not owned by any company; it is a community standard that any organization, platform, registry or agent framework can implement." "We support Infoblox's work on DNS-AID and believe open standards for identity, discovery and verification will be critical as agents become part of everyday digital experiences." — https://www.infoblox.com/news/news-events/press-releases/infoblox-and-godaddy-support-open-standards-for-ai-agent-discovery-identity-and-verification/
  17. The Linux Foundation, Linux Foundation Announces DNS-AID Project to Advance Decentralized AI Agent Discovery, 2026-05-27, checked 2026-10-29: "SAN FRANCISCO, May 27, 2026" "The Linux Foundation and initial project members – including Cloudflare, CSC, Equinix, GoDaddy, IDC, Indeed, Infoblox, Internet Systems Consortium, and WWT – will support the long-term growth of open, interoperable infrastructure for the emerging agentic web." "By extending this proven architecture to the agentic web, DNS-AID provides the foundational routing layer that autonomous systems need to operate safely and efficiently." "By leveraging the internet's existing Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure, DNS-AID provides a robust, decentralized alternative to the centralized registries and hardcoded URLs currently limiting AI interoperability." — https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-dns-aid-project-to-advance-decentralized-ai-agent-discovery
  18. InfoWorld (Maxwell Cooter), DNS-AID will make AI agents easier to discover, says Linux Foundation, 2026-05-29, checked 2026-10-29: "While many details remain to be worked out, the proposal suggests domain owners create a new well-known address that can provide a starting point for agents looking for one another: _index._agents.{domain}." "DNS-AID was initially developed by staff at Infoblox, and the latest internet draft of the DNS-AID proposal includes contributions from staff at Deutsche Telekom and Amazon." — https://www.infoworld.com/article/4178820/dns-aid-will-make-ai-agents-easier-to-discover-says-linux-foundation.html
  19. Help Net Security (Sinisa Markovic), DNS-AID lets AI agents find and verify each other through DNS, 2026-06-01, checked 2026-10-29: "Each agent gets a record under a pattern such as _chatbot._mcp._agents.example.com, which encodes its protocol, service port, capability document, and other metadata." — https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/06/01/dns-aid-ai-agent-discovery-dns/

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