Imagine this situation. You have finally decided to truly manage your DNS. You have selected a DNS service provider, you have created master and secondary zones, and you have added all the DNS records that you will need. You spend a lot of time and effort. And after everything is ready, you want to check and… there are no changes! Don’t worry. The DNS propagation takes time.
What is DNS propagation?
It is a process to update the changes that you make in your DNS. After editing or creating new DNS records, they are saved in the authoritative DNS nameserver. That is ok, but what about all the rest of the DNS name servers? The cache memory of the recursive DNS servers will still keep the older versions of the DNS records based on their TTL value.
The DNS propagation is the time it will take to propagate, to update the changes to all of the recursive name servers.
4 factors that affect the DNS propagation speed
Frequently asked questions about DNS propagation
Do you have any doubts about the DNS propagation, we hope you can find your answer here:
Could we make the DNS propagation faster?
Of course, we can, but there is a catch. Boosting the speed depends on the TTL value of the DNS records, so lowering the TTL value of each of the DNS records will indeed guarantee faster DNS propagation. The problem is that you might not want to have DNS records with low value. It will stress more your DNS servers, updating them too often.
We don’t need all of our DNS records to update all the time.
It is better to keep the records’ TTL values at their normal level. Plus, editing all of them will take a lot of time.
Can you check if the DNS propagation is ready?
Of course, we can, and this time there is no problem. You need to see if the IP address for a domain name has changed. This will indicate that the A or AAAA records are updated already.
We will show you different ways depending on your OS.
*Change yourdomainname.com with your actual domain name.
Linux or macOS
Open the Terminal, and we will use one of the built-in commands called the Dig command.
dig yourdomainname.com
You can use the host command too, whatever you prefer.
Windows OS
The Terminal alternative in Windows is the Command Prompt. Inside it, we will use the NSlookup command.
nslookup yourdomainname.com
How long can the DNS propagation take?
It can take a long time. Depending on when the recursive DNS servers updated themselves and the TTL values of the DNS records, it can take as much as 72 hours.
Conclusion
Waiting for the DNS propagation to occur is a time-consuming process that we could not fully predict. This is the situation, and there is little we can do, so just be patient, and in less than 72 hours, the update will happen.
Patience is the key here!