November 29, 2025
Plot twist: DNS has a map
DNS LOC Record
Cloudflare’s secret “where am I?” DNS trick sparks nerd chaos
TLDR: Cloudflare fixed a tiny but crucial gap in its DNS server: parsing human-readable location records into the format servers use. The crowd split between excited homelab tracking ideas and “who even uses this?” skepticism, with memes and nostalgia proving that even niche DNS features can ignite big reactions.
Cloudflare dusted off an obscure “LOC” DNS record—the internet’s built‑in way to pin a physical location—and the crowd went wild. The company admitted a tiny “oops”: their fast Go-based DNS server could reply to location requests, but wasn’t parsing the human-readable text into the binary format the internet expects. It’s the most nerd mystery ever, straight from the ancient rulebook (RFC 1876) updated back in 1996.
The comments turned into a tug-of-war between dreamers and skeptics. One fan got fired up about homelab tracking—adding LOC records to find devices “without a dynamic IP”—and even imagined GPS-powered fleet updates. Meanwhile, the practical crowd demanded receipts: “Who actually uses this?” asked xg15, while another lamented that the playful demo site is gone, taking the Easter egg joy with it. OG Cloudflare voice jgrahamc popped in with a time warp: “Did I really write that 11 years ago?” Cue collective nostalgia.
And of course, the meme brigade arrived with the classic: “it’s always DNS.” Even with only 743 LOC records among millions, fans argued that tiny corners matter at Cloudflare scale. Whether it’s a treasure map in your domain or a relic no one reads, the LOC record is suddenly the internet’s hottest old-new feature—and the comments are here for the drama. Check the settings yourself at Cloudflare DNS
Key Points
- •CloudFlare’s authoritative DNS server RRDNS is written in Go to handle fast responses and DNS attacks.
- •LOC records are rarely used; CloudFlare’s database contains 743 LOC entries, yet the DNS editor supports them.
- •A customer report revealed LOC records weren’t served due to missing parsing code in RRDNS.
- •RRDNS stored LOC data as text but lacked conversion to the internal binary format required for responses.
- •RFC 1876 defines LOC’s textual fields, defaults, and fixed-size binary wire format, unlike TXT records.