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I need a dns expert, cause I'm thoroughly confused right now...

We've got about 30 sites that are registered to custom name servers :

Ns1.vertigo.bm and ns2.vertigo.bm

Vertigo.bm points to name servers at site5, with the other sites supposedly being passed on with the custom name servers.

Now a lookup of vertigo.bm will give me :

DNS servers ns2-merton.webserversystems.com [174.120.194.4] ns1-merton.webserversystems.com [174.120.194.3]

Which in turn should pass on to the custom name servers, however doing a lookup with a domain that has these custom name servers (bprfc.bm for example) gives us this :

DNS servers ns2.vertigo.bm [174.120.16.36] ns1.vertigo.bm [174.120.16.35]

Those are the old ip address for the old server ... The registrar has said they've updated the name server, but I don't see any updating! Help!

user97901
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    Excuse me, but the terrminology you are using is not helping... When you say veertigo.bm "points to", do you mean that webserversysteem.cccom is delegating it to your nameservers? also, posting your zone file (and the parent zone's if poossible) would help. – Alien Life Form Oct 15 '11 at 06:11
  • Terminology is worse than terrible. Just name any of problem domain, I'll try to debug with **real data** – Lazy Badger Oct 15 '11 at 09:43
  • Sorry for the poor terminology - nova.bm ... That's a problem domain – user97901 Oct 15 '11 at 11:09

1 Answers1

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DNS data is cached in servers around the world. Checking your servers for changes is likely to mislead you as to whether a change has been made or not.

Looking at your data from here shows that your changes have been made. It looks like your TTL (Time To Live) is about four hours so your changes should be visible to you as well.

When making major changes it is best to make changes in a manner that uses the old and new addresses for a transitional period. One approach would be to publish both the old and new ip addresses at least on TTL period. Then when the transition occurs DNS will have the new addresses to use. Once the transition is done the old IP addresses can be removed.

It is common to change the TTL to a low value prior to the change so that cached data will be refreshed quickly. Scaling down the TTL over a period of time can be used limit the period when most requests are handled by your listed name servers.

EDIT: You can check what various name servers have in their cache with the nslookup or host (newer Linux/Unix distributions) command. You could try google (8.8.4.4 or 8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS (208.67.220.220 or 208.67.222.222) to see what some major caches have. The command for one of the name servers listed above is:

nslookup  ns1.vertigo.bm 8.8.8.8

The timetable I use for scaling down TTL is to reduce it by half whenever the time until the change is twice the current TTL. Keep the TTL at least five or ten minutes. Add the new addresses to the active nameservers 10 to 20 minutes in advance of the change. Remove the old entries after the change has been accomplished.

BillThor
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  • ttl is 21600 which I think is about 6 hours, but the changes were made yesterday at 3, so it's been longer than that... Could it simply be a time issue ? – user97901 Oct 15 '11 at 07:32
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    Double checked the TTL on your NS records. They are 86400 or 24h. The other times I see are 14400 or 4h. If this is what was on your old records you may need to wait until 3 your time for the change of nameserver to appear on your DNS. – BillThor Oct 15 '11 at 19:35