Knowledgebase

DNS Propagation

Domain Name System (DNS) is a naming structure for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. Think of DNS as the address book of the Internet. It allows users to type a domain name like google.com and to connect to the actual server holding the information for that website. The same process occurs every time a user requests a page from a website, and Nameservers play a vital role in it.

Now let us talk about the delay that occurs once you change the nameservers of a domain. When the location of the files that your website is made of change, you have to also change nameservers. And when it does, it may take up to 24-72 hours for it to come into effect. This delay is known as DNS Propagation.

Due to the nature of the Internet's structure, each Internet service provider (ISP) caches the DNS configuration for a domain. When a user accesses a website for the first time, the ISP caches the information it got from the root DNS - a specialized server that holds information about each domain's DNS zone. While having cached information improves subsequent requests for the same domain. When the Nameservers are changed, the cached data is useless as the ISP must find out the new location to which Nameservers are pointed.

Of course, now you are wondering why the time frame for the DNS propagation is so loose, but the answer is straightforward. Different ISPs are configured differently and will refresh their caches at different intervals. While you may live in Los Angelis and your ISP could have refreshed its cache two hours after the change, if the website is situated in London, the request has to go through a few key ISP nodes between LA and London and some of them might not yet finished propagating the change. This is why the website will not load for some users but might load for others.

On a local level, your computer might have also cached the already outdated information. Because of that, the first thing you should do when you experience propagation is to clear your browser's cache and flush the DNS cache.

If you still have trouble accessing the website in question you can edit your hosts file in order to force the connection to the new IP address of the website. You can also use a proxy service that will allow you to access the website from another ISP node. However, keep in mind that other users might still have issues opening the website in its new location due to their ISP's cache.

One of the easiest methods of checking the propagation status of your website is a DNS checker. The two DNS checkers listed below will provide a free DNS lookup for a domain of your choice and show data regarding which locations have finished propagating and which still have cached outdated information.

DNS checker
ViewDNS.info

DNS propagation is an unwanted by-product of the way the World Wide Web has been designed, but there are still methods to avoid it altogether. Using Cloudflare can mitigate any propagation as your website will be accessed via the IPs of the closest to the user edge node. While the IP address of the server has been changed, the IPs of the edge nodes will still be the same, and the delay will be skipped entirely or lowered down to 15-30 seconds - the amount of time needed for all edge nodes to obtain the new DNS configuration.

Further reading:

Domain Status Codes

Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) domain status codes, also called domain name status codes, indicate the status of a domain name registration. Every domain has at least one status code, but they can also have more than one.

Finding and understanding your domain status code can help you answer questions such as:

Is your domain registration about to be dropped?
Is it safely locked to prevent unauthorized transfers, updates or deletions?
Does it have any restrictions or pending actions that you need to address?
Is your domain in the proper state to transfer?

It is important for domain owners to understand EPP status codes because they can explain why your domain may have stopped working, if it is protected from domain name hijacking, and when and if your domain name registration will expire and become available to the public for registration.

The following is a list of all status codes and detailed explanation of their meaning:

ACTIVE/OK: The registry sets this status. The domain can be modified by the registrar. The domain can be renewed. The domain will be included in the zone if the domain has been delegated to at least one name server.

REGISTRY-LOCK: The registry sets this status. The domain can not be modified or deleted by the registrar. The registry must remove the REGISTRY-LOCK status for the registrar to modify the domain. The domain can be renewed. The domain will be included in the zone if the domain has been delegated to at least one name server.

REGISTRAR-LOCK: The sponsoring registrar sets this status. The domain can not be modified or deleted. The registrar must remove REGISTRAR-LOCK status to modify the domain. The domain can be renewed. The domain will be included in the zone.

REGISTRY-HOLD: The registry sets this status. The domain can not be modified or deleted by the registrar. The registry must remove the REGISTRY-HOLD status for the registrar to modify the domain. The domain can be renewed. The domain will not be included in the zone.

REGISTRAR-HOLD: The sponsoring registrar sets this status. The domain can not be modified or deleted. The registrar must remove REGISTRAR-HOLD status to modify the domain. The domain can be renewed. The domain will not be included in the zone.

REDEMPTIONPERIOD: The registry sets this status when a registrar requests that the domain name be deleted from the registry and the domain has been registered for more than 5 calendar days (if the delete request is received within 5 days of initial domain registration it will instead be deleted immediately). The domain will not be included in the zone. The domain can not be modified or purged; it can only be restored. Any other registrar requests to modify or otherwise update the domain will be rejected. The domain will be held in this status for a maximum of 30 calendar days.

PENDINGRESTORE: The registry sets this status after a registrar requests restoration of a domain that is in REDEMPTIONPERIOD status. The domain will be included in the zone. Registrar requests to modify or otherwise update the domain will be rejected. The domain will be held in this status while the registry waits for the registrar to provide required restoration documentation. If the registrar fails to provide documentation to the registry within 7 calendar days to confirm the restoration request, the domain will revert to REDEMPTIONPERIOD status. The domain status will be set to ACTIVE only if the registrar provides documentation to the registry within 7 calendar days to confirm the restoration request.

PENDINGDELETE: The registry sets this status after a domain has been set in REDEMPTIONPERIOD status and the domain has not been restored by the registrar. The domain will not be included in the zone. Once in this status all registrar requests to modify or otherwise update the domain will be rejected. The domain will be purged from the registry database after being in this status for 5 calendar days.

There are some additional Domain Status Codes which are considered uncommon. For more information you may review the official ICAN Status code list and description.

Further reading:

Domain Transfer

Domain transfer is a service that allows you to transfer your domain from one registrar to another. There are several reasons for which you might consider transferring your domain to a different registrar:

Better renewal pricing
Consolidating all your hosting service under a single provider
Free domain renewal upon transfer
The new registrar provides additional services such as DNS management, email services etc.

If you wish to transfer your domain to us, you need to:

Step 1: Check the Domain Transfer Requirements
Step 2: Transfer Your Domain to Todhost

Check the Domain Transfer Requirements

If you consider transferring your domain to a different registrar you will need to make sure that the new one supports the extension of your domain name. Most common domains such as .com, .net and .org are usually supported by most companies, however, some country specific domains and uncommon extensions might not be supported by your new domain registrar.

In order to initiate the domain transfer process you will need to obtain the EPP/Authorization key for your domain. The EPP/Authorization key can be generated by your current domain registrar upon request. The key is required in order to submit your transfer order with the new registrar for your domain name.

Be advised that EPP/Authorization key has an expiration period of up to several days, so you should submit your domain transfer order soon after the key is generated for you or regenerate it to make sure it will be valid by the time your transfer order is submitted.

In general, the following requirements must be met in order to have your domain successfully transferred to the new registrar:

The domain name to be transferred should be in "ok" or "active" status.
The owner of the domain should have access to the domain's administrative email address.
The owner of the domain name should have access to the domain's EPP/Authorization code.
The domain name must be at least 60-day old.

After the domain transfer process is initiated you will receive an email with a confirmation link. This link will be valid for 5 days and you will need to click on the link to confirm and start the transfer process.

As soon as the domain transfer process is complete, which might take from a few hours to up to several days, you will receive a second email from the new registrar to confirm your domain WHOIS information. This is an important step as well and you need to confirm your domain information, otherwise the domain will be deactivated due to ICAN regulations.

Both the domain transfer and whois verification emails can be resent any time by the new domain registrar, so if you miss any of the emails you can request to have them resent to you.

Transfer Your Domain to Todhost

Todhost provides domain transfer services to all existing customers. Transferring your domain to Todhost will give you access to our user-friendly domain management interface to take full control of your domain. Additionally, all transferred domains to Todhost will be renewed for one additional year and you will always renew your domain on the same great price.

To initiate the transfer process for your domain name, please make sure that all requirements for a successful domain transfer are met and you have access to your domain administrative email address. If you no longer have access to that email address you may request to have that email changed by your current domain registrar.

When you are sure that all requirements are met, login your Client Area and click on the Domain Transfer link under the Domains section in your Client Area.

Input your domain and select your domain extension to check if the domain transfer is available for your domain. If you do not find your extension in the list, contact our technical support for additional information via your client area support section.

If your domain is available for transfer, click on the Add to Cart button to proceed.

Next you will be asked to input the name servers for your domain. Be advised that these name servers will be set after your domain transfer is complete. During the transfer your domain will not be modified by our registrar.

Complete the check out process to submit your order. If all requirements for the successful domain transfer are met you should receive your domain transfer confirmation email shortly.

Further reading:

Domain Life Cycle

We now explain the different phases of a domain life cycle. It is important to understand these phases in order to make sure that your domain name stays active or to find out what options are available to you in case you would like to renew your domain.

Available: While a domain name is in the 'Available' stage it can be registered by any person or organization via a domain registrar that operates under the tld authority. If you would like to register a domain and it is available for registration, you can proceed with the process via your Client Area ? Domains section ? Register New Domain.

Active: When a domain is in this phase it means that it has been already registered and it is fully functional. Domains of the most common extensions can be registered for minimum 1 year and maximum period of 3 years. During this state the domain can be renewed any time but its maximum life period cannot be extended to a period longer than 3 years. While being in this phase the domain can be renewed on the standard price rate for the domain tld via the domain registrar. Additionally, this is the only phase during which you can transfer your domain.

Expired: If a domain is not renewed before its expiration date, the domain status will be changed to Expired. Being in this phase the domain will no longer work and any website services via the domain will be no longer accessible via it. If your domain enters this phase you can renew it via your domain registrar to reactivate it on the standard pricing. The domain will stay in this phase for about 30 days and can be renewed only by its owner. If the domain is renewed it will go back to the Active phase.

Redemption/Grace Period: If a domain name is not renewed in the 30-day-period while being in the Expired state it will go into Redemption phase. Redemption period might vary depending on your domain registrar or domain extension but usually lasts for up to 90 days. During this period the domain can be renewed only by its owner but additional fees will be applied depending on the registrar to reactivate the domain.

Pending Deletion: In case you do not renew your domain name during the Expired or Redemption phase your domain will go into the Pending Deletion stage. Domains in Pending Deletion cannot be renewed and usually stay in this phase for up to 5 days until all records for the domain are removed from the domain authority zone.

Depending on the original domain registrar, the domain may be released and set back to Available status after the Pending Deletion phase. Still, some registrars might withhold the domain or/and list it on domain auction websites.

As a general rule of thumb we highly recommend to renew your domain if you need it even during the Redemption/Grace Period instead of waiting to be released for general registration after the Pending Deletion phase. Domains with higher page rank or SEO-friendly names are usually withheld.

Further reading:

DNS records

Introduction - What is DNS?

The acronym DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is the backbone of internet. Its purpose is to resolve the hostnames that you input into your browsers search bar (e.g. domain.com) and finds their internet address(IP of their location), otherwise no communication can be established, since IP addresses are the main way that data is transferred over the internet.

For example if you type example.com it will go ask the authoritative DNS server for the top level domain .com and fetch example.com's host server name servers which in terms will eventually lead you to the IP address at which example.com resides(we say eventually because the name servers of that server might point at another server's name servers).

All those details that we mentioned in the example above - name servers and IP addresses are stored in the host server's DNS zone file. The information that is stored in a DNS zone file is defined by DNS records in a text format.
DNS Records

A DNS record is a text entry in the host server's DNS file that presents information to the DNS resolver about various kind of data. The format in which a DNS record is noted is the following:

<owner of the record ? <time to live> <record class><record type> <record specific data>

The owner of the record is the domain name for which the record is relevant. If this field is left blank it will by default assume the value of this field for the previous record.

The time to live, abbreviated as TTL, present's the domain name client with a time variable(in seconds) for which the data of the given record is relevant, so that it can be stored in the client's cache for faster access. Once the time expires the user discards the old information and makes a request to the server for new data.

The record class informs of the namespace for which the given record information is intended. The most commonly used one is the IN namespace which stands for internet. But there are other namespace types as well, but we won't go into further detail.

The record type is the field that informs of the functionality of the given record. It also gives the name of the whole record.

Record specific data - one or several fields of data that is specific for each record type.

Example of a DNS record entry in the zone file:

this.example.com.    17700    IN    A    123.22.189.1

This example shows that the domain this.example.com is located on the IP 123.22.189.1. And the time to live for the record is 17700. Also not that the domain provided in the owner field end with a dot, this is important in DNS records, since if there isn't a dot the hostname to which the IP will resolve is this.example.com.example.com.

We'll review the record type in more detail in the next section of this tutorial.

Types of DNS Records:

A and AAAA records
CNAME Record
MX record
PTR record
NS record
SOA record
SRV record
TXT record
NAPTR record

A & AAAA records

A and AAAA records have similar purpose in the DNS zone file. The A record (also called address record) assigns and IP address to a domain or subdomain, the IP that is stored is in the IPv4 format. AAAA record does the same as the A record, but it stores IPv6 addresses.

The name of the AAAA record derives from the fact that IPv6 addresses require 128 bits to store an address, in contrast to IPv4's 32 bits, which is 4 times greater thus the 4 A's.

Example for A record:

example.com.    17700    IN    A    123.22.189.1

This example states that the domain example.com's IP is 123.22.189.1, this data will expire for the DNS sever client's cache after 17700 seconds.

Example for AAAA record:

example.com.    25700    IN    AAAA    FE80::0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329

This record states the same as the previous example only this time example.com resolves to FE80::0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329 the record class is again Internet, and the time after which this data expires in the cache is 25700 seconds.

CNAME Record

CNAME Records (also known as canonical name records) shows that the specified domain name is an alias of the domain that is presented in the <record specific data> field. An example would be if you wish to make so that regardless of the subdomain that the user enters, the server will always resolve to your primary domain:

*.myprimarydomain.com.  27500    IN    CNAME        myprimarydomain.com.

The example above is a common convention which is applied in order to make so that even if, for example, the user inputs a wrong amount of w's- e.g. ww. mypriamrydomain.com it will still resolve. This is achieved by the wildcard notation that we won't discuss in this tutorial. The other usage of this is for wildcard subdomains, for ease of the owner of the website, so that he mustn't input a new record for each subdomain that is created.

MX (Mail Exchange) Record

The MX record is used to specify a mail server. It then points to an A record which resolves to the correct IP address for the mail server. In the data specific field you must also specify a priority of the mail server, this convention is necessary If you specify multiple MX record entries In the zone file. The priority indicates which server should be used first if there is a mailing task to be handled, if that sever is unavailable the next one in the priority list will be used instead. The priority dictated by a numeric value where the lower the number the higher the priority, with the highest priority being 0.

Example

example.com.    17100    IN    MX    0 mailserver.com.

The example above specifies that emails sent to mail.example.come should be resolved to the mail server located at mailserver.com. Keep in mind that you must also specify an A record (or AAAA record) pointing to the mail server's IP location.

PTR (Pointer) Record

The pointer record is used to point an IP to a selected host name. PTR records are primarily used for reverse DNS lookup (obtaining a host name via the IP that resolves to that hostname. You should ask your hosting provider regarding details related with setting up a PTR record.

NS (Nameserver) Record

A NS record or (name server record) tells recursive nameservers which name servers area uthoritative for a zone. Recursive nameservers look at the NS records to work out who to ask next when resolving a name.

Example:

yourdomain.com.    28500    IN    NS    ns1.yourdomain.com.

section

SOA (Start of Authority) Record

The start of authority record is absolutely necessary for a DNS zone file. Its purpose is provide information about the server, such as the authoritative master name server for the zone file, an email address of the server's administrator. The SOA record also contains a parameter that contains the domainID and timers which give out information about the expiration of the zone file, update period timer. An important fact is that only one SOA record may exist in a zone file.

Example:

domain.com.      17500    IN  SOA   ns.domyourdomainain.com. user.yourdomain.com. ( 5002130210 2d 1h 2w 1h )

The example above gives the following information:

ns.

yourdomain

.com is the master name sever for yourdomain.com's zone file
User.domain.com is the email to the name server's administrator
( 5002130210 2d 1h 2w 1h ) - the informative parameter containing the domain id, and two time parameter indicating the expiration time of the zone file, and the last time that an update was made.

SRV (Service) record

SRV records give information about available services on your system. Usually they are used together with SIP configuration. Particularly SRV records have a specific notation for specifying the name of the owner domain. It is constructed in this way:

_<name of service>._<protocol name>.yourdomain.com

The parameters that must be set in the record specific data field:

1.Host of the specified service - a domain name must be input
2.a priority integer - works in the same way as the MX priority parameter
3.weight - used to distribute the load that can be accumulated on any of the servers that are being used(it is indicated by an integer and the lowest amount of load that can be set is 0)
4.port on which to connect in order to obtain the desired feature.

Example of an SRV record:

_http._tcp.domain.com.        17500    IN     SRV    0 3 80 example.com.

The provided functionality is http, the protocol is tcp, and the 3 numbers in the record specific data field are priority=0, weight=3 and port = 80, after which is the host's name - example.com.

TXT (Text) record

Text records are used to store any information in a txt format on the zone file. Frequently the TXT record is used to store information such as domain keys and Domain Keys Indentified by e-mail. In some occasions there might be a txt record containing information about the servers network, datacenter and other types of administrative information. In the more frequent cases it is used to store sender policy framework (SPF) specifications.

Example of a txt record that is storing SPF details:

domain.com.    75000    IN    TXT    "v-spf1 - all"

section

NAPTR (Naming Authority Pointer) record

Allows the use of regular expression based rewriting for domain names, in order to use them as URI's.
These records are usually used along with SIP (session initiation protocol), in order to root telephony sessions over IP networks.

Further reading:

How to Use the Hosts File

Modifying your hosts file allows you to override the DNS for a domain, on that particular machine. This is useful when you want to test your site without the test link, prior to going live with SSL; verify that an alias site works, prior to DNS changes; and for other DNS-related reasons. Modifying your hosts file causes your local machine only to look directly at the IP address specified.

You can direct all traffic from your local computer to access your website on a specific servers without the need of pointing your domain. In order to perform this you should edit your hosts file on that particular computer. Depending on the OS (operational system) you need to use the following steps:

Windows Users

If you are using Windows OS you should access the hosts file from:

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\

You can open the hosts file with your favorite text editor. If you receive this message: "File operation failed. Access is denied", you will have to open the file as administrator. In the file you should write:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx domain.com

where "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" is the IP address of the server, where your website is hosted and "domain.com" is the actual domain name set on your website.

Mac OS Users

If you are using Mac OS X, you should access Applications ? Utilities ? Terminal. Once the terminal is accessed, write the following command:

sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Type your user password when prompted. Once the hosts file is accessible for changes, you should enter the following line

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx domain.com

where "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" is the IP address of the server, where your website is hosted and "domain.com" is the actual domain name set on your website.

Linux Users

Last, but not least, the Linux users will have to open terminal window. Access the hosts file with the following command:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

On a new line in the file enter:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx domain.com

where "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" is the IP address of the server, where your website is hosted and "domain.com" is the actual domain name set on your website.

When you complete the changes on your hosts file, you can save it and access your website the usual way. It will lead to the specific server that you defined in the hosts file and you will be able to test from your local machine without pointing your actual domain.

Further reading: