The Time to live (TTL) field in DNS records determines how long a DNS entry can be cached by a resolver before it must be discarded and re-queried to obtain fresh information. An excessively high TTL value can lead to the caching of outdated information, causing resolution issues like the intermittently unreachable web resources mentioned in the scenario. It's important to configure an appropriate TTL value based on how often the DNS record information changes. Contrasting options, such as Start of authority (SOA), Canonical name (CNAME), and Mail exchange (MX), refer to different types of DNS records and their purposes, not the caching duration of the records.