What Is DNS-AID?

DNS-AID is an open standard, currently advancing as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft and open-source software, that defines how AI agents can publish discoverable metadata using existing DNS record types, including RFC 9460 Service Bindings (SVCB), DNS-SD service discovery, Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), and DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE). DNS-AID is not owned by any company; it is a community standard that any organization, platform, registry or agent framework can implement.

By advancing DNS-AID, Infoblox is helping establish a standards-based discovery layer for agents. GoDaddy supports the goal of open, DNS-based agent discovery and believes DNS-AID complements ANS by addressing a related but distinct need: helping agents and systems find the metadata needed to evaluate and connect with one another.

What Is the Agent Name Service?

Agent Name Service is an open standard and implementation for AI agent identity, naming and verification, built on DNS and PKI. GoDaddy is a co-author of the ANS IETF draft and a significant contributor to its open-source implementation.

ANS is designed to let agent operators use domain names they already own--without requiring a new registry or proprietary naming system. This helps make agents identifiable and addressable through the same established internet infrastructure that already supports websites and email.

Shared Principles

ANS is anchored on agent identity: giving agents unique names and the cryptographic proof to back them. DNS-AID focuses on agent discovery: defining how agents' capabilities and endpoints are published in DNS so other systems can find them. The two efforts share a DNS and PKI foundation and are being developed to fit alongside each other in DNS as complementary parts of an open agentic internet. Put simply: ANS answers who an agent is, and DNS-AID helps others find what it can do.

Infoblox and GoDaddy believe agent discovery and identity should be open and interoperable, not tied to proprietary protocols or closed registries. Agent deployers should retain control over their agents' identity, metadata, discoverability and policies, and trust decisions should be based on open, auditable, cryptographically verifiable signals rather than proprietary reputation scores controlled by a single vendor.

Why DNS?

DNS is already globally deployed, federated, extensible and supported by mature operational and security practices. Building agent identity and discovery on DNS means inheriting decades of operational experience, caching infrastructure, anycast resilience, governance process and an installed base that reaches every device on the internet. SVCB records provide an extensible record format that can support agent capabilities, endpoints and protocols.

An Open Invitation

Infoblox and GoDaddy recognize that it will take the industry to come together to define the future of the agentic internet alone. "We are calling on cloud providers, agent platform vendors, registrars, security companies and standards organizations to join us in open standards work," said Wei Chen. "We believe AI agents should be discovered and verified through open infrastructure that is fully federated and distributed."

To learn more about DNS-AID, visit www.dns-aid.org.

To learn more about ANS, visit www.ansinfo.ai.