All You Need to Know About DNS Propagation

More and more businesses are going online today. From social media marketing to online sales, a lot of business applications and executions have moved online, meaning the digital footprint of a company is crucial. This being the state of affairs, it’s natural that new website registration figures are going through the roof. But here’s something for you to consider — let’s say that you have a furniture store called Comfy Cushions. You’ve read all about the benefits of being online, and finally, you’ve launched a website called comfycushionsonline.com. But computers, servers, and ISPs don’t actually recognise or read the name comfycushionsonline.com. They need a unique name and address, in a language that they understand, i.e., in the digital format. This is where IP addresses and DNS come into the picture. In this article, we will explain the meaning of Domain Name Systems and detail the workings of DNS propagation.

DNS

Every website is given a unique number which acts as its digital address, and it is these numbers that servers and ISP’s store in their cache. The system that’s used to allocate, organise, and track these numbers is called DNS — Domain Name System.

These unique numbers are called IP (Internet Protocol) Addresses. So, in essence, DNS is the system that’s used to convert human-friendly website or domain names into their corresponding digital addresses (IP address).

The server that keeps all this information (names of websites and their corresponding IP addresses) is called a Domain Name Server. Each domain (website), usually, has at least two DNS servers.

DNS Propagation:

Let’s say you’ve been using comfycushionsonline.com for a while and now your company is working on a rebranding process. You’ve changed the name of your store from Comfy Cushions to Elegant Furniture. Therefore, you also have to change the name of the website.

So, you go to your website control panel and change the name of your website to elegantfurnitures.com. This is where DNS propagation comes into play. Now, it’s important to understand that DNS propagation is independent of your hosting type or plan. Even if you have a modern VPS Hosting plan or a stable Shared Hosting plan, DNS propagation will still affect you the same way.

When you change the name of your website, you’ve basically made changes in the DNS file. This means that every DNS server in the world needs to be updated about these new changes. The process in which DNS servers update information about domains is called DNS propagation.

Given that we know that every single DNS server in the world needs to make a change, it’s natural that this process takes some time. Usually, it takes anywhere between one to 24 hours for the DNS propagation to complete. There are even cases where it takes up to 72 hours.

How DNS Propagation Works:

Let’s take a look at exactly how DNS propagation occurs. So, let’s say you live in Mumbai and you’ve just changed the name of your website that is hosted in Arizona, USA.

1. Local DNS Cache and Local ISP: Normally, when someone opens your website, their request doesn’t go directly to the web hosting server. Instead, if the person logs in from, say Bengaluru, the computer first checks the local DNS cache and then to a local ISP.
2. Upstream Provider: From here, the request goes to an upstream provider, say, in Dubai.
3. Receiving Point in Destination Country/Region: From Dubai, the request is transferred to the first receiving point in the US — New York.
4. Destination ISP: It is only then, after all this jumping around, that your request reaches the Arizona ISP.

Obviously, this is just an example and not necessarily a set route for every or any request. But the process is important to understand why DNS propagation takes quite a while:

1. Every step of this way, meaning in every city that the request is sent to, the ISP nodes will check their own cache to see if they have the required information for the domain.
2. If these nodes don’t have the required information, they look it up and save it for speeding up the loading time in the future. This will also reduce traffic. These nodes, however, have specific refresh intervals.
3. This basically means that one server might have updated information while another might not. This is why DNS propagation does not happen instantly. It takes time.

The Practical Aspects of DNS Propagation:

Requests jumping around the globe, DNS servers updating — all this is fine and dandy. But if you’re a website owner, chances are, you have more practical questions about DNS propagation.

First off, is there any way to speed up the DNS propagation?

1. Well, sort of. But more often than not, changes don’t really take 48 or 72 hours. It usually happens in five to six hours. Even after six hours or so, if you don’t see the changes that you’ve made, then you might need to flush your DNS cache.
2. This is basically a process where you delete old DNS information and allow new information to present itself. The process is fairly simple, and there are plenty of handy guides to help you. Here’s one guide to help you understand this better.
3. But if six hours is still too much for you and you want to speed up the process, there’s one thing you can do. It involves changing something called TTL settings. TTL stands for Time To Live.

What is TTL (Time to Live)?

TTL is basically the time period for which servers across the globe will cache your DNS records. So, let’s say your TTL is 1 hour. DNS servers, in this case, will store your details for 1 hour before going back to the main, authoritative server for updated information.

If you reduce this time to say one hour, the DNS servers will come back to the authoritative server every one hour and get updated information. This will reduce the propagation time. But there’s a catch.

This will also increase the stress on your authoritative server. This will result in slow processing speed and stress on the website. So, do this only if you know exactly what you’re doing. For all practical purposes, changing TTL isn’t required. DNS propagation doesn’t take too much time.

If you want to check how far the propagation has progressed, there are various free tools on the internet that you can use to confirm the locations at which your DNS info has updated. What’s my DNS?, DNS Unlimited, and PropagatedYet are some of the popular ones.

With all these tools and relatively quick DNS propagation times, changing your DNS details shouldn’t be too stressful for you. However, there is a plethora of guides and videos online that help you at each step of the process., And at any step, if you aren’t exactly sure of what’s happening, take a quick peek.

Prevention is indeed better than cure, especially if it has anything to do with the internet.