January 13, 2004

VeriSign Naming and Directory Services will change the serial number format in the .com and .net zones' SOA records. Currently, the serial number format is YYYYMMDD, plus an additional two-digit number (00 to 99) that is updated whenever the zone data is updated.

Under the new system, VeriSign will change the serial number to a unique value equal to the number of seconds since 00:00:00 Greenwich Mean Time on Jan. 1, 1970, Larson said.

That will allow VeriSign to make better use of its Advanced Transaction Lookup and Signalling (ATLAS) system technology to make more frequent and efficient updates to .com and .net, from the current system of two daily updates, Burns said.

VeriSign does not anticipate disruptions stemming from the change, Larson said. But the company did allow that "processes that rely on the semantics of the .com/.net serial number" could be affected.

For example, companies that have created scripts to monitor domain change on .com and .net will almost certainly need to make changes to account for the serial number change, said Thor Larholm, senior security researcher at Pivx Solutions LLC of Newport Beach, Calif.

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