# How to update DHT after garbage collection?

**URL:** <https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/how-to-update-dht-after-garbage-collection/1417>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [November 8, 2017, 9:23am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/how-to-update-dht-after-garbage-collection/1417 "2017-11-08T09:23:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![stebalien](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/stebalien/32/156_2.png) [@stebalien](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/stebalien)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 10:44pm UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/how-to-update-dht-after-garbage-collection/1417/2 "2017-11-08T22:44:21Z")

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At the moment no, we just wait until the provider records expire (24 hours, I think?). In general, deleting records from DHTs is difficult to impossible; all you can really do is replace it with a record saying “this other record is invalid”. Also, publishing (and deleting) provider records is time consuming so we’d like to avoid doing so when possible.

It _may_ make sense to have some way to delete provider records for popular content (on a best-effort, when necessary basis). However, figuring out how to do that correctly is non-trivial so it’s not really a priority (this _isn’t_ really a burning issue at the moment so it’s unclear if deleting provider records will save much bandwidth).

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