Knowledgebase

Once you make a change to your domain's nameservers, it can take anywhere from a few minutes up to several days for the change to take effect. This has a lot do do with ISP caches. When a DNS request is made, the results are cached so that any additional requestes are pulled directly from the cache rather than continuously creating unnecessary DNS traffic. This duration has a lot to do with your domain's TTL (time to live) value. Typically this value is around 172800 seconds, or in other words, 2 days. This means that some ISPs will continue directing your domain to the old nameservers for up to 2 days after a change is made.

If you anticipate a change in nameservers is needed, the best practice would be to lower the TTL value several days prior to a value of 300 seconds, or in other words, 5 minutes. In doing so, you will be assured that any changes will be effective almost immediately. The TTL value can then be risen to a typical value again after the change to the nameservers has been made.

If you're unsure on how to change the nameservers or the TTL value for your domain, you should contact your domain registrar for additional help.

Add to Favourites

Print this Article