11

I looked at one of my domains at intodns.com and I got a "Your SOA EXPIRE number is: 3600000. That is NOT OK".

What is a good SOA EXPIRE number?

2 Answers 2

18

The best is subjective:

RFC1912 suggests 2-4 weeks. This is how long a secondary/slave nameserver will wait before considering its DNS data stale if it can't reach the primary name server.

we normally use 2419200 which is 4 weeks..

4
  • just updated and re-ran intodns.com. intodns.com likes your number @Doon :) Accepting this as the answer as soon as the clock ticks down on it. May 16, 2012 at 20:09
  • Most of the tools use the Recommendations set forth in the RFCS and BCPs, so I am not surprised.
    – Doon
    May 16, 2012 at 20:11
  • Not clear on your comment @Sandman4 ... if you are referring to me accepting this answer, kindly forgive me. Often I chase down an issue and follow many paths until I get a solution. Then I move on to other things. I just accepted the answer because you were kind enough to comment and SF was kind enough to send me an email reminder. May 21, 2012 at 11:34
  • Ideally, SF would allow me to accept an answer when it comes in rather than putting my brakes on and tell me I need to wait 10 minutes to accept it as the answer. I think that was very clever programming on the part of the developer who clearly had way too much time on his hands to implement such a non-productive / inefficient use of this service (unless of course I am missing something). :) Have a great day. May 21, 2012 at 11:35
6

intodns.com (I love them) is an automatic service. It reports anything uncommon, which may or may not represent a real problem.

As for expire specifically, very high values rarely affect anything, and in some setups SOA expire is not relevant at all.

As for RFC 1912, it's suggestion about expire is just that - suggestion if one wants to play no-brainer he can just use the suggestion. If one knows how his DNS infrastructure works, he can decide himself, and any value he choose will not be violation of the RFC.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .