Time to live

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Time to live (TTL) or hop limit is a mechanism which limits the lifespan or lifetime of data in a computer or network. TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the prescribed event count or timespan has elapsed, data is discarded or revalidated. In computer networking, TTL prevents a data packet from circulating indefinitely. In computing applications, TTL is commonly used to improve the performance and manage the caching of data.

Contents

Description

The original DARPA Internet Protocol's RFC describes [1] : §1.4  TTL as:

The Time to Live is an indication of an upper bound on the lifetime of an internet datagram. It is set by the sender of the datagram and reduced at the points along the route where it is processed. If the time to live reaches zero before the internet datagram reaches its destination, the internet datagram is destroyed. The time to live can be thought of as a self destruct time limit.

IP packets

Under the Internet Protocol, TTL is an 8-bit field. In the IPv4 header, TTL is the 9th octet of 20. In the IPv6 header, it is the 8th octet of 40. The maximum TTL value is 255, the maximum value of a single octet. A recommended initial value is 64. [2] [3]

The time-to-live value can be thought of as an upper bound on the time that an IP datagram can exist in an Internet system. The TTL field is set by the sender of the datagram, and reduced by every router on the route to its destination. If the TTL field reaches zero before the datagram arrives at its destination, then the datagram is discarded and an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) error datagram (11 - Time Exceeded) is sent back to the sender. The purpose of the TTL field is to avoid a situation in which an undeliverable datagram keeps circulating on an Internet system, and such a system eventually becoming swamped by such "immortals".

In theory, under IPv4, time to live is measured in seconds, although every host that passes the datagram must reduce the TTL by at least one unit. In practice, the TTL field is reduced by one on every hop. To reflect this practice, the field is renamed hop limit in IPv6.

DNS records

TTL of a DNS answer resolving google.com, seen in Wireshark TTL of a DNS answer resolving google.com, seen in Ubuntu Linux Wireshark.png
TTL of a DNS answer resolving google.com, seen in Wireshark

TTLs also occur in the Domain Name System (DNS), where they are set by an authoritative name server for a particular resource record. When a caching (recursive) nameserver queries the authoritative nameserver for a resource record, it will cache that record for the time (in seconds) specified by the TTL. If a stub resolver queries the caching nameserver for the same record before the TTL has expired, the caching server will simply reply with the already cached resource record rather than retrieve it from the authoritative nameserver again. TTL for NXDOMAIN (non-existent domain) responses is set from the minimum of the MINIMUM field of the SOA record and the TTL of the SOA itself, and indicates how long a resolver may cache the negative answer. [4] [ jargon ]

Shorter TTLs can cause heavier loads on an authoritative name server, but can be useful when changing the address of critical services like web servers or MX records, and therefore are often lowered by the DNS administrator prior to a service being moved, in order to reduce possible disruptions.

The units used are seconds. An older common TTL value for DNS was 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours. A TTL value of 86400 would mean that, if a DNS record was changed on the authoritative nameserver, DNS servers around the world could still be showing the old value from their cache for up to 24 hours after the last update by client.

Newer DNS methods that are part of a disaster recovery (DR) system may have some records deliberately set extremely low on TTL. For example, a 300-second TTL would help key records expire in 5 minutes to help ensure these records are flushed quickly worldwide. This gives administrators the ability to edit and update records in a timely manner. TTL values are "per record" and setting this value on specific records is sometimes honored automatically by all standard DNS systems worldwide. However, a problem persists in that some caching DNS nameservers set their own TTLs regardless of the authoritative records, thus it cannot be guaranteed that all downstream DNS servers have the new records after the TTL has expired.

HTTP

Time to live may also be expressed as the date and time on which a record expires. The Expires: header in HTTP responses, the Cache-Control: max-age header field in both requests and responses and the expires field in HTTP cookies express time-to-live in this way.

See also

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a client–server architecture.

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a supporting protocol in the Internet protocol suite. It is used by network devices, including routers, to send error messages and operational information indicating success or failure when communicating with another IP address. For example, an error is indicated when a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached. ICMP differs from transport protocols such as TCP and UDP in that it is not typically used to exchange data between systems, nor is it regularly employed by end-user network applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPv4</span> Fourth version of the Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version deployed for production on SATNET in 1982 and on the ARPANET in January 1983. It is still used to route most Internet traffic today, even with the ongoing deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), its successor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPv6</span> Version 6 of the Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.

In computer networking, the maximum transmission unit (MTU) is the size of the largest protocol data unit (PDU) that can be communicated in a single network layer transaction. The MTU relates to, but is not identical to the maximum frame size that can be transported on the data link layer, e.g., Ethernet frame.

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In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Within an IP network, UDP does not require prior communication to set up communication channels or data paths.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root name server</span> Name server for the DNS root zone

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In computer networks, a reverse DNS lookup or reverse DNS resolution (rDNS) is the querying technique of the Domain Name System (DNS) to determine the domain name associated with an IP address – the reverse of the usual "forward" DNS lookup of an IP address from a domain name. The process of reverse resolving of an IP address uses PTR records. rDNS involves searching domain name registry and registrar tables. The reverse DNS database of the Internet is rooted in the .arpa top-level domain.

Multicast DNS (mDNS) is a computer networking protocol that resolves hostnames to IP addresses within small networks that do not include a local name server. It is a zero-configuration service, using essentially the same programming interfaces, packet formats and operating semantics as unicast Domain Name System (DNS). It was designed to work as either a stand-alone protocol or compatible with standard DNS servers. It uses IP multicast User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets and is implemented by the Apple Bonjour and open-source Avahi software packages, included in most Linux distributions. Although the Windows 10 implementation was limited to discovering networked printers, subsequent releases resolved hostnames as well. mDNS can work in conjunction with DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), a companion zero-configuration networking technique specified separately in RFC 6763.

A Domain Name System (DNS) zone file is a text file that describes a DNS zone. A DNS zone is a subset, often a single domain, of the hierarchical domain name structure of the DNS. The zone file contains mappings between domain names and IP addresses and other resources, organized in the form of text representations of resource records (RR). A zone file may be either a DNS master file, authoritatively describing a zone, or it may be used to list the contents of a DNS cache.

The Internet checksum, also called the IPv4 header checksum is a checksum used in version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4) to detect corruption in the header of IPv4 packets. It is carried in the IP packet header, and represents the 16-bit result of summation of the header words.

IP in IP is an IP tunneling protocol that encapsulates one IP packet in another IP packet. To encapsulate an IP packet in another IP packet, an outer header is added with Source IP, the entry point of the tunnel, and Destination IP, the exit point of the tunnel. While doing this, the inner packet is unmodified. The Don't Fragment and the Type Of Service fields should be copied to the outer packet. If the packet size, including the outer header, is greater than the Path MTU, the encapsulator fragments the packet. The decapsulator will reassemble the packet.

An IPv6 packet is the smallest message entity exchanged using Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Packets consist of control information for addressing and routing and a payload of user data. The control information in IPv6 packets is subdivided into a mandatory fixed header and optional extension headers. The payload of an IPv6 packet is typically a datagram or segment of the higher-level transport layer protocol, but may be data for an internet layer or link layer instead.

A start of authority record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) containing administrative information about the zone, especially regarding zone transfers. The SOA record format is specified in RFC 1035.

References

  1. ↑ J. Postel, ed. (September 1981). INTERNET PROTOCOL - DARPA INTERNET PROGRAM PROTOCOL SPECIFICATION. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0791 . STD 5. RFC 791.IEN 128, 123, 111, 80, 54, 44, 41, 28, 26.Internet Standard 5. Obsoletes RFC  760. Updated by RFC  1349, 2474 and 6864.
  2. ↑ "Default TTL Values in TCP/IP". Archived from the original on 2013-02-12. Retrieved 2013-02-19.
  3. ↑ "IP OPTION NUMBERS". 2012-11-30. Retrieved 2013-02-19. The current recommended default time to live (TTL) for the Internet Protocol (IP) is 64 [RFC791], [RFC1122].
  4. ↑ M. Andrews (March 1998). Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE). Network Working Group. doi: 10.17487/RFC2308 . RFC 2308.Proposed Standard. Updates RFC   1034 and RFC   1035. Updated by RFC   4035, RFC   4033, RFC   4034, RFC   6604, RFC   8020, RFC   8499, RFC   9499, and RFC   9520.
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