[NCSA-discuss] DNS Questions

[A. Michael Salim]

Hi,

> There are too many domains to just modify each one individually.  Not to
> mention that I do not even control all of the domains.  Any help
> suggestions?

Things are a lot different today.  You may have some work cut out for you
ahead, no short cuts unfortunately.  Your first step will be to identify
the current registrar, and the login and password to manage each one.
More than likely, they are NOT all under one roof (same registrar) nor a
single profile.  Your end goal is to get all your domains on one registrar
and one profile with that registrar.

So ... after getting the login info for each one, go and "unlock" each
domain name so it is ready to transfer to a new registrar.  then pick a
new registrar you like (cost, ease of use, well known, reliable etc. are
all important factors.  Picking an el-chepo registrar based on some
far-off island in the Pacific versus a well known US based registrar is
your decision.  Not all US based regtrars are, shall we say, "without
blemish".  No names but you can email me off-line if you like.

After picking a registrar, sign up an account and profile, and transfer
all your domains there (it will cost you one year's worth of registraion
fee for each one but thats the price you will need to pay) and then you
are done.

> Why do I constantly hear that it takes up to 3 days to make a change?
> Yes many years ago we have all experienced problems but today?  I am not
> giving anyone a hard time, but I am curious what people are REALLY
> seeing.  Recently (as noted) have have changed both DNS servers and IP
> addresses.  For the most part everything was as instantaneous as
> specified in the SOA record or the TTL.
>
> When planning a change, I bump those numbers down to something like 15
> or 30 min.  I do that about a week prior.
>
> *I* have found that old hosts are not hit after more than a couple of
> hours.

The delay consists of three components:

a) your TTL for the zone file: 15 minutes as you said

b) registrar delay: typically 12-24 hours.  Root zones at the Internic are
updated twice daily.

c) Router and nameserver cache delays at your upstream provider.  This
could be up to 24 hours.

Hence the warning about 2-3 days.  It is still real.  Typical times are
12-24 hours.  Don't expect anything less.  You can control the TTL but
not anything else.

Mike