Serial numbers should ideally be managed automatically, so that you don't have 
to care, but ISO 8601 style is definitely the most friendly of the common 
options.

The minimum/negative TTL should match the default TTL, and I agree 1 hour is a 
good starting point.

Regarding the refresh timer, NOTIFY should make it irrelevant, but there are 
cases like stealth secondaries where it still matters. I think that batch 
rebuild jobs are most easy to communicate to colleagues if they happen hourly, 
so the refresh time should probably be 1 hour, to match. (The result is that 
routine updates propagate within an hour if things are working properly, or two 
hours in awkward cases.)

I agree with Paul that a short retry timer also makes sense, so recovery from 
failure is short. I use 15 minutes, but it is happily not something I have had 
to worry about :-)

Novices are not expected to be responsible for DNSSEC but they might be looking 
after a zone signed by someone else. In a signed zone, the expiry time needs to 
be less than the RRSIG lifetime. A broken secondary should return an error 
(making resolvers try other, hopefully working, secondaries) before it returns 
bogus data. The default RRSIG lifetime (in BIND and I think other signers) is 
30 days and records are re-signed weekly, so the default expiry time should be 
about 3 weeks (500 hours). 

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <[email protected]>  http://dotat.at

> On 11 Aug 2017, at 15:40, Carsten Strotmann <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> RIPE document 203 "Recommended for DNS SOA values" gives recommendations
> for the values of the SOA record used in simple and stable zones. The
> document has been aimed at beginner level DNS administrators, to give
> guidance when creating a zone file.
> 
> <https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-203>
> 
> The document has been successful, and despite its age, it is still being
> used and referred to today.
> 
> Over time the document has aged and the recommendations given in the
> text are not a good match for today's Internet DNS anymore.
> 
> Some while ago Peter Koch and I volunteered in the RIPE DNS WG to update
> the document.
> 
> In my work (DNS training, consulting and support), I get occasional
> requests for recommendations for SOA values to use. This shows that such
> a document is still useful today.
> 
> Before starting the process of wordsmithing the entire text, we would
> like to discuss the new values here in the mailing list.
> 
> The aim for the document is not to provide the one and only set of
> "correct" values (there are many), but a set of values that are "not
> wrong" in most DNS use cases. Also keep in mind that the document should
> be of help for novice DNS administrators with relative simple zones
> (less than 1000 RRs, no more than 1 change/week). Large zones, very
> agile zones with dynamic changes, specialty zones like Active Directory
> zones are out of scope of the document.
> 
> Like the original document, we present one set of values, not
> ranges. The document should be a "as simple as possible" starting point
> for new DNS admins. Copy and pasting is encouraged.
> 
> As Roland v. Rijswijk mentioned in his talk at SHA 2017 last weekend
> (recommendation --> "OpenINTEL: digging in the DNS with an industrial
> size digger"
> https://media.ccc.de/v/SHA2017-130-openintel_digging_in_the_dns_with_an_industrial_size_digger)
> the Internet is build on the premise of de-centralization. To support
> DNS operators today that like to run their own DNS infrastructure
> (instead going central in "the cloud"), the entry barrier for setting up
> a simple but working DNS zone should be as low as possible.
> 
> The original SOA values for RIPE 203:
> 
> example.com.  3600  SOA  dns.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
>                         1999022301   ; serial YYYYMMDDnn
>                         86400        ; refresh (  24 hours)
>                         7200         ; retry   (   2 hours)
>                         3600000      ; expire  (1000 hours)
>                         172800 )     ; minimum (   2 days)
> 
> the new proposed and updated values
> 
> $TTL 3600
> example.com.  3600  SOA  dns.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
>                         2017080101   ; serial YYYYMMDDnn
>                         7200         ; refresh              (   2 hours)
>                         1800         ; retry                (  30 minutes)
>                         3600000      ; expire               (1000 hours)
>                         3600 )       ; minimum/negative TTL (   1 hour)
> 
> One observation from the past years is that in situations where the time
> required for an DNS change is longer that the average working day (8
> hours), the change is more likely to fail. Operators get distracted and
> abandon the change or pick up the change at a later day having lost the
> context of the original intend for the change.
> 
> The new values are chosen in a way that most changes to the DNS zone and
> infrastructure can be done in one work day.
> 
> Lower values will cause more DNS queries and more load on the DNS
> infrastructure (resolver and authoritative server), but recent
> experiments ("How the TTL reducing impacted the .cz zone"
> https://en.blog.nic.cz/2017/05/18/how-the-ttl-reducing-impacted-the-cz-zone/)
> has shown that the effects are manageable.
> 
> Some changes to the DNS infrastructure (like change of delegation
> information) depends on the TTL values used in the parent domain, but we
> also see a trend to use lower TTL values in the parent zones as well
> ("Keeping DNS Parents and Children in Sync at Internet Speed!, Olafur
> Gudmundsson, Cloudflare"
> https://ripe70.ripe.net/presentations/51-RIPE-20150309-cf-DNS.pdf).
> 
> Given these constraints, we would like to get feedback from the
> mailing list on the new values: 
> 
> * do you see potential issues with the proposed values for zones that
>   are in scope of the document?
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Carsten Strotmann
> 


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