>>>You seem to want the ttl element so that you have the publisher's permission to check less often. Why not just do so anyway if it causes so many problems? If that degrades the user experience too much, you're free to check more often. How is the ttl element useful to you?<<<
I allow anyone to specify any refresh interval higher than the greater of ttl or 60 minutes. The ttl allows me to extend the minimum refresh interval beyond 60 minutes. 'MSDN just published' at http://msdn.microsoft.com/rss.xml includes <ttl>1440</ttl>. I therefore set the refresh interval to 1 day when the feed is added and I do not allow people to specify a lower refresh interval. If the ttl tag simply described the minimum refresh interval, I would also use it to allow people to specify refresh intervals less than 60 minutes knowing that was acceptable to the feed provider. Unfortunately, the genesis of the ttl tag means that lower ttl values are unreliable. The BBC, for example, specifies a ttl of 5 which I'm sure refers to that tag's original use, not a minimum refresh interval. Andy
