The Structure of a DNS SOA Record

ID: Q163971

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

The first resource record in any Domain Name System (DNS) Zone file should be a Start of Authority (SOA) resource record. The SOA resource record indicates that this DNS name server is the best source of information for the data within this DNS domain.


MORE INFORMATION

The SOA resource record contains the following information:

Source host - The host where the file was created.

Contact e-mail - The e-mail address of the person responsible for administering the domain's zone file. Note that a "." is used instead of an "@" in the e-mail name.

Serial number - The revision number of this zone file. Increment this number each time the zone file is changed. It is important to increment this value each time a change is made, so that the changes will be distributed to any secondary DNS servers.

Refresh Time - The time, in seconds, a secondary DNS server waits before querying the primary DNS server's SOA record to check for changes. When the refresh time expires, the secondary DNS server requests a copy of the current SOA record from the primary. The primary DNS server complies with this request. The secondary DNS server compares the serial number of the primary DNS server's current SOA record and the serial number in it's own SOA record. If they are different, the secondary DNS server will request a zone transfer from the primary DNS server. The default value is 3,600.

Retry time - The time, in seconds, a secondary server waits before retrying a failed zone transfer. Normally, the retry time is less than the refresh time. The default value is 600.

Expire time - The time, in seconds, that a secondary server will keep trying to complete a zone transfer. If this time expires prior to a successful zone transfer, the secondary server will expire its zone file. This means the secondary will stop answering queries, as it considers its data too old to be reliable. The default value is 86,400.

Minimum TTL - The minimum time-to-live value applies to all resource records in the zone file. This value is supplied in query responses to inform other servers how long they should keep the data in cache. The default value is 3,600.

The following is an example of a Microsoft DNS server generated default SOA resource record: 


@   IN  SOA     nameserver.place.dom.  postmaster.place.dom. (
                               1            ; serial number
                               3600         ; refresh   [1h]
                               600          ; retry     [10m]
                               86400        ; expire    [1d]
                               3600 )       ; min TTL   [1h]

Parentheses allow the SOA record to wrap to multiple lines.

In the above example:
Source Host = nameserver.place.dom.
Contact Email = postmaster.place.dom. 


Keywords          : kbnetwork nttcp NTSrv 
Version           : WinNT:4.0
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: February 9, 1999