What Does Start of Authority (SOA) Mean?
Start of Authority (SOA) is a set of data that provides critical resources for the Domain Name System that helps to validate domains on the Internet. The Domain Name System, maintained by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and a community of registrars, sorts out ownership and control rights for specific domains. The SOA element contains information about the host for a particular domain, as well as a basket of information about how long it takes a host server to refresh the domain, to respond to messages or to retry failed operations.