#### Editing the Direct Zone SOA Record

The SOA (start of authority) record is the most crucial record in a DNS entry. It conveys more information than all the other records combined. This record is called the start of authority because it denotes the DNS entry as the official source of information for its domain.

Below is the example of a SOA record:

mydomain.com. IN SOA ns1.mydomain.com. root.mydomain.com. (

2004031101 ; Serial

10800 ; Refresh

3600 ; Retry

3600000 ; Expire

86400 ) ; Minimum

The first line indicates:

- The zone, in our example, mydomain.com
- The type of record - Internet SOA
- The primary name server for the zone, ns1.mydomain.com in our example
- And a contact e-mail address for the zone. Note that the e-mail address uses a period (dot) in place of the @, and that all of these domain names must end with a dot.

On the next lines are:

- The serial number, which can be anything as long as it increased each time the record is updated. Note that if you don't update the serial number when you make a change to the record, the change won't go through. The serial number used in our example consists of the year, the month, the day, and the number of changes (01) made on March 11, 2004.
- The refresh period, i.e., the frequency with which the data should be checked by a secondary name server, in seconds.
- The retry period, i.e. how often a failed attempt to connect should be retried, in seconds.
- How soon the data should expire if it hasn't been refreshed, in seconds.
- The default minimal time-to-live (TTL) of the data, in seconds. TTL defines how long other name servers should cache, or save, the records containing in a given zone file.

Note: The changes made to a SOA record as this described below are saved in the zone file only, but not in the HSPcomplete database.

To edit a SOA record for a domain:

1. Select Service Director - Domain Manager - Domains.
2. Select the domain by clicking on its name. As a domain details will be displayed, click the DNS Zone tab. The list of DNS records appears.
3. Click the Edit SOA button.
4. You can change the values in the form that appears:
   1. Type the retry period in seconds into the Retry field.
   2. The serial number in the Serial field will be incremented by 1 automatically as soon as you save your changes.
   3. Type the default minimal TTL in seconds into the Minimum TTL field.
   4. Type the data expiration period in seconds into the Expire field.
   5. Type the data refresh period in seconds into the Refresh field.
   6. Indicate the contact e-mail address for the zone in the Email field.

      Note: At your convenience, in the HSPcomplete interface the dot in the e-mail address (see the example above) is already replaced with the @. So please use @ when indicating a new e-mail address.

5. Click the Update button.

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