Talk:Time to live

- That first sentence is very awkward. Yeah, I know it parses correctly, but can someone make it more readable? Also, is it pronounced "live" as in "Liver" or "live" as in "Alive"? ThreeRocks (talk) 21:53, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

✅ --Kvng (talk) 15:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

- pakistan and inaccessible encyclopedia article. Don't rely so heavily on jargon and at least hyperlink those terms you will not define. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.250.140.74 (talk) 05:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

a "stub resolver"... this article is somewhat helpfull, but i have no idea what a stub resolver is, so it should be either explained further here or a hyerlink to some other article.

also, it is well known that routers reduce the TTL by on. However, do hubs, switches, bridges, and more importantly repeaters have any effect on the TTL? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.130.106.12 (talk) 00:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hubs, switches, bridges and repeaters generally do not have any effect on TTL, because they operate in Layer 1 and/or Layer 2 (of the OSI Model) while TTL is a Layer 3 concept. However 'switch' became a marketing term some time ago, so for example a so-called Layer 3 switch may implement routing features, and be essentially a routing device. Rubasov (talk) 22:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Removed Table
I've removed the table in the "Time to live of IP datagrams" section for the following reasons: Modern operating systems set the initial TTL field to a fixed value.
 * 1) The TTL field in the IP header is never used in this way. It could never be used in this way, because network topology is a very uncertain factor, and varying all the time. The TTL field is only there to keep stray data packets from surviving.
 * 2) The hop counts in the table are way to high, even the remotest outskirts of the internet can be reached in 30 or 35 hops.

I've pasted the text I removed below. Jaho 21:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The arbitrary values below represent how long the packet should live with respect to the given TTL value. The numbers are a rough estimate and are dependent on the number of routers in your network.
 * 1) 0 is restricted to the same host
 * 2) 1 is restricted to the same subnet
 * 3) 32 is restricted to the same site
 * 4) 64 is restricted to the same region
 * 5) 128 is restricted to the same continent
 * 6) 255 is unrestricted


 * You removed not just the table but the whole section discussing TTL in IP. I assume this was unintentional and so I've put that back. --Kvng (talk) 23:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

September 1981
http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc791.txt Internet Protocol Introduction

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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.18.29.20 (talk) 12:13, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Example
added an example. I am concerned about WP:HOWTO and WP:OR. I'm not convinced the example is necessary. I am concerned about WP:BITE so have improved formatting and invite editors to discuss this contribution here. -—Kvng 17:34, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

DNS records as a citable source for wikipedia articles
Wikipedia policy on citing sources for material in articles varies, for example, an obscure romantic fiction novel may be cited, or a newspaper article, but the UK`s Daily Mail is not allowed; Is it ok to cite DNS record(s), changes made to DNS records, changes made to TTL, etc, etc? i.e. If I wrote something like, "On the 11th November `11, the registrant of website-X was not (fictional) Sigismunder Reynisson, but on the 22nd of November `11 the registrant was the fictional Sigismunder Reynisson. The Registrar of Record of website-X made changes to the DNS records ", if the DNS records cited are correct, that`s a certified source to cite, isn`t it? Can I cite these sources? CHeers126.209.0.225 (talk) 16:09, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

should be ok, yes.207.228.146.67 (talk) 03:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Awkward sentence
"An older common TTL value for DNS was 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours."

This implies that 86400 seconds should no longer be used, but fails to provide the "new" common TTL value that is implied. I think the right answer is that 86400 is still the most common and recommended value, but since I am not sure, I won't edit it. David Spector (talk) 21:52, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

revert change
I believe the IP troubleshooting section should be reinstated as a meaningful addition to time to live. Oilfighter (talk) 04:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)