You’ve registered your domain name, and paid for hosting and uploaded your website to the web server. If this is all done, why can’t you see the results of your hard work right away? What is this DNS propagation people keep telling you about?

When you set up your website with your hosting provider, they create a Master DNS record in their Domain Name Servers. Your domain registrar (the company you paid for the honor of owning your domain name) points to your web host’s DNS server as being the master authority of your domain.

When any outside source wants to know how to find your website, they first go to the registration database to find out who the DNS authority is for your website. Then they visit your hosting provider’s DNS servers to find out what the IP Address is for your domain name, and from there your audience can now view your website.

The problem with this whole scheme is that in order to speed up the rate at which their customers can view the internet, each ISP caches their DNS records. This means that they make their own copy of the DNS records, and read from their server instead of looking them up on the Internet each time someone wants view a website. This actually speeds up web surfing quite a bit, by (1) speeding up the return time it takes for a web browser to request a domain lookup and get an answer, and (2) actually reducing the amount of traffic on the web therefore giving it the ability to work faster.

The downside to this caching scenario and what makes it take so long for your website to be visible to everyone, is that each ISP that caches DNS records only updates them every few days. Thereisn't any standard, and they can set this "refresh" time anywhere from a few hours to several days. The slow updating of the servers cache is called propagation, since your websites DNS information is now being propagated across all DNS servers on the web. When this is finally complete, everyone can now visit your new website. Being that the cache time is different for all servers, as mentioned above, it can take anywhere from 36 to 72 hours for DNS changes to be totally in effect, although it can often be quicker.

The best rule of thumb is to update your DNS records (when you first register your domain name, change your webhost or transfer your domain) starting on a Friday afternoon. This way the propogation takes place over the week-end when your internet traffic is at it's lowest point and will have least effect on your users. Obviously, if the weekend is your busiest time, plan it for the days you have least traffic.