DNS Propagation Check

DNSPropagation.net is a free online tool that helps you to instantly perform a DNS lookup against domain names current IP addresses. It will get your DNS record information against different and multiple name servers around the world. This name servers will show you the result of the dns propagation test.

When you change your domain Name Servers from your domain registrar, it may take up from 24 to 72 hours for the change to take effect and be reflected on every part of the world. This is what we usually call 'DNS Propagation' or 'DNS Propagation Time'.
It is the time for all ISPs (internet service providers) from all across the globe to update their DNS cache records to know / detect that the IP has changed for your domain.
As DNS Propagation is done gradually from place to place, some users may see your website responding from the old IP, while other users from different geographic places may see the website responding from the new server. This is totally normal.

DNS propagation check is useful when you switched webhost or stared a new website and you just changed your domain DNS Name Servers from your domain registrar. This tool will perform a free dns lookup against your IP address and will confirm if the website is completely propagated worldwide or not.

It demends on the type of change you made to your DNS.

Name Server changes can take up to 72 hours max to be reflected and fully propated around the world.

DNS record changes are way faster, and can be propagated within a few hours from almost all providers.

Because it's the way the DNS system was built in first place. It is not an anomally or an error, it is just the way it works. Let's see this with a day to day example:
Your office is located in Miami, US and you just changed the NameServers of your domain that is hosted in a server located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
When you try to browser your domain in Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, the request is not going to be direct to your server, first it has to go trough a few ISP points / nodes. That's is when your notebook / pc starts checking on your local DNS Cache and the request is sent to your Miami ISP.

After that, it is redirected to Chicago, US, and then your request has to cross the Atlantic ocean all over to Europe, to connect to other intermediate ISPs in Spain, until it finally reaches your server located in Netherlands, as you see in the next image:




Each of the mentioned ISPs in the different geographic places check their own DNS Cache to see if they already have information about your domain, if it's not, then they look for it and saves it for next time to avoid requests the next time, this accelerates DNS resolution and traffic over the dns servers.

ISPs also handle the time to live (cache refresh time) differently, that's also another reason on why some of them will discover your new IP soon than others.

Now you know why your dns propagation time takes up to 72 hours.

There are ways to speed up dns propagation, the first one is to use a good provider like the ones mentioned before.

The other thing you can do to improve dns propagation time is to set your DNS zone TTL really low.

When you migrate your website and make dns changes you want the DNS switchover to happen as fast as possible.

You can switch your current TTL and reduce the time before you peform the migration. 600 (10 minutes) is a good TTL value, you must do it at least 24 hours before the migration. 10 minutes before making the change, you can set it even lower, to 60 (1 minute).

This configuration has been proved to work well to accelerate dns propagation.

After all your traffic is served from the new server, you can switch back the TTL to the normal value.

Alternative ways include to bypass propagation include:

1) Alter your current A record

Point your A record from your current hosting provider at the DNS zone pointing to the new IP address of your website. Set your TTL really low like 200 or 300. This will almost make propagation time to be reduced at max, and make your site propagation time to only take between 20 to 35 mins average. Then the A record will be updated all over the world across major ISPs.

This will make your domain to be resolved from previous places in the world where propagation time isn't completed yet, to the new destination, it's like a forced way to make propagation faster.

2) Modify your "hosts" file

Place a line like this at the end of your hosts file, this method works for any operating system like Windows, Linux or Mac:

XX.XX.XX.XX yoursite.com www.yoursite.com

This modification will force your local computer to resolve the website bypassing DNS propagation and letting your network know that your site is hosted at the IP address you specified on that file. After modifying that file, just open up your browser and surf your site normally from the new server destination.

Once the propagation is done, around 48 hours after the initial change, make sure to remove these entries from your hosts file, as they won't be necessary.

3) Use a fast public DNS server

Cloudflare public DNS Servers (1.1.1.1) and Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8) are the fastest public DNS servers in the world and can help you a lot to pass propagation time.

Make sure you include this line at the top of your resolv.conf file (on Linux and Mac):

If you are using Windows 10 you can alter your hosts file following this steps:

• Open up the Windows "Control Panel".
• Click on "Network and Internet", then click "Network and Sharing Center".
• Click on "Change adapter settings".
• Right Click on your current Network interface connected to the internet - Click on "Properties"
• Click on the protocol "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" - Click on "Properties"
• Select "Use the following DNS server addresses".
• Enter 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8.
• Save changes.

This method will ensure you will get the max DNS resolution speed while connecting outside of your network.

After this change, make sure you clear your browser cache as well. You should also make sure to flush your DNS cache using Google Flush cache utility.

On Unix / Linux you can use dig, for example:

You can also use ping command to get your site IP:

For Windows users, you can also use the same ping command and also nslookup:

As you see, in this case the DNS response address is: 208.167.252.236

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Our DNS checker tool is constantly monitored for accurate results, fast response when it comes to dns resolution from the local United States DNS servers, as well as the global dns servers we use for these dns propagation tests from various locations. Our mission is to offer you the best DNS record lookup tool, always.

Based in our experience, the fastest DNS providers are:

DNSMadeEasy
DynDNS
Cloudflare

If you host your DNS zones with those providers, dns propagation can be really fast.

We believe our tool is by far one of the most accurate DNS check tools on the Internet to get this information. Wether if you recently changed your DNS record types or values (like SOA record, AAAA records, etc), and are wondering whatsmydns server after that change, or if you recently migrated from a web hosting or just changed your local dns server, or any kind of DNS information chage within your current remote or local DNS server, we are the definitive dns query tool to diagnose specific DNS problems related to dns configurations.

That’s totally normal for some dns requests, just wait a bit longer (a couple of minutes or hours) and run a new DNS check, so you will get the latest data from the current dns server. Alternatively, you can use the dig command or the nslookup command line tool as we explained in other questions above.