SOA (Start of Authority) Record

Lorena Powers

Modified on: Mon, 10 Aug, 2020 at 9:41 PM

SOA (Start of Authority) records are used to determine how your zone propagates to the secondary nameservers. DNS Made Easy creates a default SOA record for each domain added into our system. However, you can create and customize your own SOA record and assign it to a domain within DNS Made Easy.

1. Select SOA Records

2. Click the Plus Button

Click the + icon in the bottom left to create a new SOA record

3. Insert SOA record details

Name – This is the name that this record will have in the DNS Made Easy system, you will use this name to identify your record.
TTL – The number of seconds that this record will be cached in other servers.
Computer – The FQDN of the name server that was the original or primary source of data for this zone.
Email – A domain-name (FQDN) that specifies the mailbox of the person responsible for this zone.
Starting Serial – The starting serial number (the number version of your zone/domain). If you apply this SOA to a domain that is already created, the serial number will be incremented by one.
Refresh – The time interval (in seconds) before the zone should be refreshed. Recommended value – 86400 (24 Hours)
Retry – The time interval (in seconds) before a failed refresh should be retried. Recommended value – 7200 (2 Hours)
Expire – The time interval (in seconds) that specifies the upper limit on the time interval that can elapse before the zone is no longer authoritative. This is when the secondary name servers will expire if they are unable to refresh. Recommended value – up to 2419200 (672 Hours)
Negative Cache – The amount of time a record not found is cached. Recommended values can vary, between 180 and 172800 (3 min – 2 days)