Here's a question that's been bouncing around in my head for some time now...

Why on earth does it take so long to have a domain name point to a different server? Everytime I've changed host companies or opened a new site, it's always taken around 72 hours for the domain name to be propogated. That seems absolutely ludicrous to me!

I mean, for crying out loud, we put a man on the moon over 30 YEARS AGO, and yet we still can't figure out a way to speed up that process. Sorry to vent like this so much in my first post, but hey, it seems like an appropriate of a place as any.

I'd love to hear your feedback.

-Ryan

Hmmm. That's what I've been wondering also. Is it taking 24-48hrs. cuz that's the automatic setting for domains to propogate on the server? Is it taking long because of hugh influx of domains needing to be propogate? What if there are only a few domains in world. Will it still take about 24-48 hrs? I wish I knew more about how these things work.

Well, some of the delay is that your records are updated one place, and there are many ISPs in the world and their servers have to update with the current info. If all records were stored one place and these were the only records used, then you get one single point of failure. Imagine if this system went down... then all domains on the net would be down. The couple days is the tradeoff.

The issue, basically, is that updates are not done around the clock. When you submit the changes to your registrar, a few things have to happen. In simplistic terms, the first thing is that your registrar has to actually make the changes to their database. They might "accept" your change, but only actually process the changes twice per day. If you do a whois of your domain, you may notice a line that says when the whois database was last updated. This is the first place for you to look for your change. Depending on your registrar, this update usually happens within the first 24 hours.

Next, your ISP has to update it's servers with the new whois information. Some ISP's check the whois databases regularly, others are much slower. This is why the site might come up on the right server for one person in 36 hours, but it might take 5 days for someone else. If the whois information is showing the correct nameservers, but your site is resolving to the old server, then your ISP has not updated their records, yet.

During this time, your browser may get confused. (Yes, I know this is not a technical term.) Depeding on your local cache & the way your ISP caches web pages, it is sometimes possible for the browser to pull up an old version of the web page. More often, though, the problem you describe happens because in the confusion of dealing with two servers, the old server ends up getting updated instead of the new server and when you start browsing the new server, those updates are "missing."

(Disclaimer: I am not saying you updated the wrong server. Obviously, I wasn't watching over your shoulder when you did this. I am answering this question using generalities, as it is a common question that other people may be interested in. The particulars of your situation are particular to your situation.)

I decided to throw this question out to my own host admin and here's what he said:

"Basically there are 100's or even 1000's of DNS servers across the world that cache DNS info for a day or so so that it cuts down on bandwidth. So basically, the waiting is waiting for these caches to update."

I wonder if by slipping one of the cacheing companies a couple of bucks you could get them to *constantly* cache your site for updates? That would certainly get it done faster wouldn't it?

I see. I changed my DNS for my domain a couple days ago and it was live within 12 hrs. However, my friend still saw the old stuff from my site on the old host. I thought that was quite strange because my domain server has propogated but not for him. So it's because of their ISP?

To add to what's been correctly stated above, you also have to take into account end users who haven't rebooted their machines. They might still be pulling up your old IP address because their local /etc/hosts file hasn't updated, even though their ISP might have.

Originally posted by NoDyce
I wonder if by slipping one of the cacheing companies a couple of bucks you could get them to *constantly* cache your site for updates? That would certainly get it done faster wouldn't it?

The DNS servers that are doing this caching are the ISP's, so theoretically you could bribe the ISP's to force a simple dump of the cache, but you would need to bribe EVERY ISP. And, you'd still have a lot of people caching the data on their own personal computers. It's a transparent process, designed intentionally to make the internet more efficient. Most* sites probably don't change DNS entries for years at a time, to check it every hour would be wasteful.

But... your frustrations are certainly not unique! :)

(*) I have nothing to back this up.

(*) I have nothing to back this up.

LOL...at least your honest.

-Ryan