If I register a domain name and point the nameservers to my resellers hosting account, in two days time could I just immediately set up the hosting space and it would be ready to go without having to wait for propagation? Or do I have to set up the hosting space straight away?

Get the hosting account setup right away. Propagation can take up to 72 hours to be done completely, but many dns servers will be updated very quickly. You want to make sure you are up and running for people visiting with ISP's that update their DNS records quickly.

However, you don't have to setup the account prior to updating your domain's name servers. As long as you know what the IP address will be.

Hope I understood your questions correctly.

As svdorr mentioned above you do not need the hosting account setup before hand.

Propogation refers to the root DNS servers throughout the world updating their databses with the correct information for your domain. Your domain will point to the nameservers you set if they exist or not.

My situation is that I have mysite1.com already setup and I want to change the domain name to mysite2.com. But I will have to change my advertising urls pointing to mysite1.com also. Since I am not sure when propagation will be completed, I figure the best thing to do is to get the url mysite2.com pointing to the nameservers, then, after 2 days pause my advertising while I change all the advertising urls and alter the url in cpanel.

Sounds like the best way to me. Let me know if its not!

Sounds like the best way to me.

Propagation times has been greatly reduced since verisign made changes in September. 72 hours would be the worst case scenario

I agree that 72 hours would be near a worst case scenario. However, you have to keep in mind many of the mom and pop ISP's out there that don't have their dns servers update as often as other ISP's.

There's no doubt that propagation times have gotten better. I can realistically register a domain and publish a site within about 20 minutes.

This has been happening with new domains that I register for quite awhile now.

Sure beats waiting 2 - 3 days to get a site online!

20 mins? man i had it once within 5 exact minutes, my customer was like ":eek: did you register the domain yesterday for me?" :D

Originally posted by svdorr
I agree that 72 hours would be near a worst case scenario. However, you have to keep in mind many of the mom and pop ISP's out there that don't have their dns servers update as often as other ISP's.

It really has nothing to do with mom and pop ISPs not having their DNS servers updated.
It has to do with the TTL that is set on the NS records at the authoritative name severs and how long ago that the name server actually retrieved the data.

It is the larger ISPs that will actually ignore the low TTLs and will default them to higher values.

Originally posted by tiggee
It really has nothing to do with mom and pop ISPs not having their DNS servers updated.
It has to do with the TTL that is set on the NS records at the authoritative name severs and how long ago that the name server actually retrieved the data.

It is the larger ISPs that will actually ignore the low TTLs and will default them to higher values.

Yes, I do understand how DNS works. And for many rural areas served by coops and local, small ISP's, it does have something to do with them. I now have DSL as my primary internet connection, but keep a local ISP account as backup. My DSL DNS is updated in hours, but the local dial-up account can take a couple of days. They also ignore the low TTL's.