LOC record

In the Domain Name System, a LOC record (experimental RFC 1876)^[1] is a means for expressing geographic location information for a domain name.

It contains WGS84 Latitude, Longitude and Altitude (ellipsoidal height) information together with host/subnet physical size and location accuracy. This information can be queried by other computers connected to the Internet.

Record format

The LOC record is expressed in a master file in the following format:

⟨owner⟩ ⟨TTL⟩ ⟨class⟩ LOC ( d1 [m1 [s1]] {"N"|"S"} d2 [m2 [s2]]
                           {"E"|"W"} alt["m"] [siz["m"] [hp["m"]
                           [vp["m"]]]] )

(The parentheses are used for multi-line data as specified in RFC 1035, section 5.1.)

where:

    d1:     [0 .. 90]            (degrees latitude)
    d2:     [0 .. 180]           (degrees longitude)
    m1, m2: [0 .. 59]            (minutes latitude/longitude)
    s1, s2: [0 .. 59.999]        (seconds latitude/longitude)
    alt:    [-100000.00 .. 42849672.95] BY .01 (altitude in meters)
    siz, hp, vp: [0 .. 90000000.00] (size/precision in meters)

An example DNS LOC resource record

statdns.net for the coordinates: 52°22′23″N 4°53′32″E / 52.37306°N 4.89222°E / 52.37306; 4.89222 (StatDNS.net LOC record)

statdns.net.   IN LOC   52 22 23.000 N 4 53 32.000 E -2.00m 0.00m 10000m 10m

Altitude for Geosynchronous Earth Satellites

The altitude range provides the following:

DNS altitude range [-100000.00 .. 42849672.95]. This range can be easily stored in 4 bytes.
Maximum altitude is 42,849.67295 km. Which is large enough to store the altitude of a circular geosynchronous orbit (i.e. approximately 35,790 km above mean sea level).
Maximum depth of 100 km below earth surface (approximated by the WGS84 reference ellipsoid).

UK Postcode to DNS LOC record using find.me.uk

You can look up the LOC record for any UK postcode, e.g.:

$ dig loc SW1A2AA.find.me.uk
SW1A2AA.find.me.uk.     2592000 IN      LOC     51 30 12.748 N 0 7 39.612 W 0.00

References

^ "A Means for Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System".

Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates The Wikipedia location resource.
Sites supporting DNS LOC
RFC 1876 - How latitude and longitude are stored in a DNS record.
RFC 2426 Chapter 3.4.2: Text/directory MIME type GEO
RFC 6350 Section 6.5.2: GEO (obsoleted RFC 2426, updated by RFC 6868)

[1] "A Means for Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System".

[1]