Transferring domain - serial number

[dhkaufman]

Scenario: I am planning to transfer an existing domain, to be served from Zoneedit. The existing domain uses YYYYMMDDNN serial numbers in the SOA - so the current SOA is 2022090405. But I can't control the serial number in the Zoneedit interface, and the domain I am setting up (it's live on Zoneedit, but I haven't delegated to it yet) has serial number 1669480180. Note, as part of this transfer, I will abandon my existing secondary name servers.

My question: will anything break if my serial number goes backwards, but I change over all my name servers at the same time?

If yes, my second question would be "how do I avoid this?" Should I be setting my existing serial number to the magic 2022090405 + 2,147,483,647 for a couple days before I switch over?

Thanks!

 

[Chris Cherry]

Hello,

The serial number is mainly to track/tell other synced servers what version it's using (such as Secondary DNS slaves). If the serial numbers are mismatched on the nameservers that the domain is delegated to, then it could be a problem since the zones being served out will not exactly match. However, the serial number becomes trivial if you're switching to Zoneedit as the primary DNS. As you noticed, we opt not to run the serial in the YYYYMMDDNN format. It doesn't make any difference in how the zone functions.

As long as we're the only delegated nameservers listed in the WHOIS for the domain, it won't matter what serial numbers (or format) were used on the previous nameservers.