For some unknown reason if I change nameservers at godaddy it takes a couple of minutes to propagate, but if I do it at namecheap it takes several hours. How can the time change from one registar to the other? Is there any way I can speed it up?
This is what I've observed. If I try to access the domain first, then make a name server change for that domain, I have to wait about 24 hours before I see the name server updated trying to access the same domain. If it's a new domain, and I HAVEN'T tried accessing it, and I make a name server update, the change is almost instantaneous. The problem I have, is my ISP caches name-server look ups. Meaning, once it's in the cache any value, my isp will not recheck for about 24 hours. I have bypassed this by using my 'hosts' file for quick changes. hth, tom
It really depends on how they have it setup. GoDaddy might have a "push" system instead of a normal "pull" system for zone transfers. Meaning when you update it, it instantly goes out to all name servers. More common is when slave servers simply poll the primary name server every so often for an update zone file. How often the slave servers should poll is based on that domain's SOA (Start of Authority). For example SOA for digitalpoint.com looks like this: digitalpoint 86400 IN SOA dns1.digitalpoint.com. admin.digitalpoint.com. ( 1127407880 10800 3600 604800 86400 ) Code (markup): Here's what some of it means... dns1.digitalpoint.com = master DNS server 1127407880 = unique serial number (changed when zone file changes). This is what slave servers look at when seeing if an update was done 10800 = the refresh period (how often in seconds slaves should check master for updates) 3600 = how often to retry a refresh if it failed 604800 = DNS records will be valid for this amount of time if contact with master is lost for the whole time 86400 = minimum TTL (time to live) for records in that domain So, if you make a LOT of updates to your DNS records, you should lower the TTL to something small (900 would be 5 minutes). This is the amount of time an end user's machine will assume a previous DNS query is valid before querying again to see if the IP changed. The other thing to look at is the refresh period for slave servers to check for changes... Mine is set to 3 hours because I rarely make DNS changes, and when I'm going to, I'll lower the TTL and refresh period a few days before in anticipation. Hmmm... probably a lot more info than you want, huh?
Some hosting companies allow you to edit your DNS records. If yours does, change your TTL time to a smaller value (quite often the default is one day, which is way too long). If you'd like to check your TTL run this command (Windows) syntax: nslookup set type=soa yourdomain.com. exit Mind the dot at the end of the domain. The value of TTL is the default time-to-live for this domain entry. Some DNS entries may override this value, so may need to check host entries as well (e.g. www.yourdomain.com.). In this case type this before exit: set type=a set d2 www.yourdomain.com. You can also ask your hosting company to decrease yours if it's too high. One hour is usually a reasonable value. J.D.
One time, I saw a domain take almost 7 days to propagate! Well, the person was halfway around the country, maybe that's why it took so long.