The SOA record contains various administrative information which applies to the zone as a whole. It consists of the following fields (the names in parentheses are the standard field names as defined in RFC1035):

Master NS (MNAME)

The full domain name of the name server where the master copy of the zone data is maintained. If the zone is maintained using NameSurfer, this field should contain the name of the host running the NameSurfer primary name server.

Admin e-mail (RNAME)

The e-mail address of the administrator responsible for this zone. This must be an Internet-style e-mail address (user@dom.ain).

Serial # (SERIAL)

The current serial number for the zone. The serial number is used by secondary name servers to determine whether there have been recent changes to the zone data. The serial number is updated automatically by NameSurfer, so there should be no need to change it by hand.

Refresh (REFRESH)

This field determines how often the secondary name servers will check the zone for changes. The default value is 8 hours, as recommended in RFC1537.

Retry (RETRY)

If a secondary name server fails to contact its primary, it will try again after this interval. The interval is typically a small fraction of the Refresh time, but it should be at least an hour. The default value is 2 hours, as recommended in RFC1537.

Expire (EXPIRE)

If a secondary name server is unable to contact its primary, it may still continue to answer queries using the last data it was able to obtain. When it has been unable to contact the primary the length of time given by the Expire value, the data will expire, and the secondary name server will no longer answer queries. The default value is 7 days, as recommended in RFC1537.

Minimum TTL (MINIMUM)

This is the minimum time-to-live (TTL) value for all the DNS data in the zone. It also serves as a default TTL value when new records are added. The initial default value is 1 day, as recommended in RFC1537.