Propagation delay

[Bellthorpe]

A week ago, I changed my plan to bulk re-seller, and have hence moved to a new IP address.

This change would normally then propagate around the world, with an expected delay of 24-48 hours. Or so.

Here are the number of visits to the old and new sites since:

DATE OLD NEW

Dec
18 1471 650
19 832 712
20 1122 297
21 189 1271
22 31 1252
23 13 501 (partial result, US dates)

Amazing, you might say. Who on earth would have a nameserver that hadn't yet picked up the new address? From whom would those 13 visits come?

Guess no more. The nameserver that serves my own requests,
sy-dns03.tmns.net.au (Telstra) is the offender!

How embarrassing!

[the_ancient]

Changes in IP address should only take a few hours, unless your TTL is set too high.

Changes in Namservers are what take the most time

[Vin DSL]

Amazing, you might say. Who on earth would have a nameserver that hadn't yet picked up the new address?

I've told this story many times, so pardon me if you've 'heard' it before, but...

At one time, we only had a single mom n' pop, dial-up ISP in my town, serviced by a single T-1 connection to the outside world. If you wanted to get on the Internet, you had to use them, or incur enormous long distance bills, dialing out to a real ISP, in a real town.

Anyway, these clowns only updated their zone files about once a month, or whenever somebody (like myself) complained...

Before I realized what was going on, I used to blame this lag time on Dotster, my web host, or whomever -- but it was my ISP's fault, in the end.

Moral of the story: Never assume!