Re: Minimum TTL question

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 04:28:02PM +0000, Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> Conceivably there may be other DNS servers that raise short TTLs up to some
> minimum, but I haven't heard of them and it would be a violation of the
> protocol (conversely, there's nothing too wrong with a ceiling on the TTL,
> since cached data can be discarded any time for a variety of reasons,
> although it would be quite antisocial to set the ceiling too low).
>
AOL are widely rumoured to ignore 'low' TTLs and raise them up to some
(equally rumoured) minimum, though I've never heard a definitive answer
from AOL as to whether they actually do this, and if so, what the value
of 'low' is.

I do note that if it's true, it is a practice that, if widely deployed,
would render AOL's MX load balancing, for which they no doubt pay an
exhorbitant ammount of money, useless.

-Pete