TTL explained for beginners

When it comes to life and businesses, time is essential. Dates, duration, and deadlines are tools to organize, measure, and adjust processes to make them efficient.

Computing and networking are no exception. Their processes are strongly ruled by time.

TTL explained

TTL means time-to-live. It sounds like a cool title for an action movie, but it’s not. TTL is a value that establishes the number of hops of a data packet travel on a network, or time data can live in the cache memory of a machine (like in DNS records).

When this defined number of hops or time comes to its end, the packet or the data are no longer valid. Therefore they will be discarded by routers and other machines.

Through TTL, network administrators can define the time for data to be alive based on the objective they accomplish. Once they complete their tasks, they get discarded.

Why does TTL matter?

TTL helps to control data packets’ traffic

Daily, the Internet involves constant communication. There’s a permanent exchange of data packets between networks, applications, and machines. This is the way it has worked since its birth in the 1980s. Without a way of limiting the existence of data packets, cyberspace could be saturated. Old and without purpose, data packets could still be traveling around. That’s why TTL matters! It’s a helpful mechanism for controlling traffic.

Administrators define a TTL for data packets. Machines read this value so they can discard or accept them. A simple but efficient mechanism to keep the order of the massive traffic on the Internet realm.

TTL reveals more information about data packets

TTL allows you to know the complete route and the time data packets have been around within a specific network.

Every data packet is sent by a source, with a specific purpose, to a destination. During its trip, the packet will touch different hops on the network. Routers will read its TTL to know if it’s still valid. If it has not expired yet, it will go forward. If it’s expired, it will be discarded.

Routers will report the expiration of a data packet to its source through the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). And here comes an interesting fact. An ICMP message will take a certain time to arrive at its destination. Knowing that time, you can track the hops the data packet touched when its TTL was not expired. So you can figure out its route.

TTL helps to make DNS propagation quicker

TTL also works for DNS. In this case, it points out the time a DNS record is valid. You should set up a lower TTL value if you need to edit a DNS record constantly, so it propagates quickly. Conversely, you can set up a higher value and lower the DNS servers’ usage.

Conclusion

TTL is key for the operation of online businesses. It’s a small value that can greatly impact your processes. Take it as seriously as it is!

GeoDNS: Definition & Details

GeoDNS is an absolutely helpful service that you could benefit from. In this article, we will take a deep look at its main purpose, how it functions and why it is so advantageous. Let’s start!

GeoDNS – Definition

The GeoDNS stands for Geographical Domain Name System and is an effective traffic distribution method. It works by responding to requests based on their location. It’s also called a traffic director or a global traffic director.

GeoDNS is an excellent solution for load balancing and optimizing traffic to domains. As a result, problems are decreased, and networks are strengthened due to their utilization.

Large volumes of traffic necessitate large-scale solutions. If you operate a global company, GeoDNS is a must-have. It will provide you with all of the essential name servers in strategic locations across the world to meet your needs and markets.

Get familiar with an excellent GeoDNS service!

More

How does UDP work?

UDP is the main topic of your article. We will take deep into its purpose and how it functions, and we will look at the relationship of UDP with DNS. So, it sounds interesting to you, let’s start!

Definition of UDP

The abbreviation UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol. It’s a well-known communications protocol that offers a fast solution. We use it to connect diverse Internet services with low latency and loss tolerance.

The User Datagram Protocol allows data to be transferred before the recipient agrees, which speeds up the communication process. Consequently, User Datagram Protocol is the preferred method for time-sensitive communications such as DNS lookups, Voice over IP (VoIP), video, or audio transfers.

Applications relying on UDP

More

DNS cache – What is it?

DNS cache – Definition

The DNS cache represents a cache memory for storing DNS data (DNS records) for particular domain names only for a short amount of time. This type of memory mechanism could be found in various devices, machines, smartphones, computers, DNS recursive servers, and more.

More

Why should you implement Dynamic DNS?

Many of you came to this article because you want to make available a particular service from your home or office on the Internet. Dynamic DNS will serve you this purpose! It is easy to implement, and it will save you money, and it could even be free if you don’t require a lot of resources. Do you want to learn more? 

What is Dynamic DNS?

Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a DNS service that allows you to create a hostname for a device and link it to its IP address. It is a simple A or AAAA record so far. The Dynamic part comes from the fact that you can set up your router to report changes in this device’s IP address and send an update message to the DNS server where the link was made. There the hostname’s IP address will be updated. It is a way to automatically update the IP address of a device and provide availability with the need of human effort. You can set up the Dynamic DNS and be sure that the service you are running will be available. 

Dynamic DNS (DDNS) service for outstanding performance!

More

DNS propagation – Get familiar with the process

DNS propagation – What is it?

DNS propagation is a complex process involving the update and spread of new modified information across the network of servers. Whenever you make a change in your DNS, for instance, create a new DNS record or edit an existing one, it is going to be saved in the authoritative DNS name server. 

However, the network contains numerous DNS servers, such as the recursive ones, which are spread in different geographical places all over the world. Therefore, each server on the network has to receive the updated changes to function correctly in the process of DNS resolution. 

The time required for distributing the changes to all of the different recursive servers is the DNS propagation.

How to check DNS propagation?

More