custom nameserver propagation

jeja7676

Member
It's been approx 12 hours since I received notification from GoDaddy which informs me that I have successfully registered my custom nameservers. I didn't change my domain's nameservers at GoDaddy, since I want to make sure first that everything did well.

I can see my custom nameservers at internic.net, but nowehere else. Ping is not working as well.

Is there a way to check what is going on with nameserver propagation, and how to make sure its (almost) done.

If I go to network-tools and do a DNS lookup for any nsxxx.hostgator.com

I get records, but if I do the same for my ns1.xxxx.com I get

Attempt to get a DNS server for ns1.xxx.com failed: ns1.xxx.com does not exist in the DNS

Maybe I have omitted something in my WHM cpanel? What would be a typical mistake? Or I just need to be more patient?

Thanks
 
Hello jeja7676,

Propagation can take up to 3 days in some cases. It sounds to me like your ISP has not propagated yet.

As far as WHM settings if you went through the initial configuration and created A records for the host and for the nameservers you should be fine. Assuming you got the IP numbers right for the nameservers :)
 
jeja7676,

Do you have "A" records for ns1/ns2 names in your current (active) DNS zone? If not these names will never start to resolve... It doesn't really matter how long you wait or when and how nameserver names are registered. What matters for propagation is TTL (time-to-live) value specified in domain's DNS zone and state of the local DNS cache of some specific system/nameserver at the time when domain is switched to new nameservers.

Regards,
Paul
 
@Dan
- added DNS zone for both nameservers, that was the first issue

"It sounds to me like your ISP has not propagated yet".
- I do tracert from network tools

@kingtas
"The mistake I made was to forget to change my nameservers IPs at my registrar."
I don't want to change domains nameservers until Im sure KnownHost nameservers are operational, i.e. they resolve

@KH-Paul
That turned out to be the first issue. I am newbie and wasnt aware of this. Some of people I know dropped the idea to have private nameservers because of this step :)


I will post here what happened at the end ...
 
Forgot to mention that its been 15 hours since DNS zone has been configured with appropriate A record.
Will keep you updated.

Thank you all
 
OK,

It turned out that the next possible issue could be that private nameservers sometimes won't be propagated unless they have been referenced, i.e. I should try to set my domain name-servers to the private ones.

Although I am a complete newbie when it comes to VPS, this seems to me a pretty important and interesting information for possible new customers. Usually people buy VPS to move from shared hosting, and they don't like to risk to have their precious domains have any unwanted down time :)

I will try to set private nameservers during low traffic period (e.g. mondays) or maybe I might even set an add-on domain for some 'not so important website' and change its domain nameservers first. Maybe that might do the trick to get indexed by "DNS serach engine" :)

Will keep you posted :)
 
very interesting...

I crated addon domain,set domain nameservers to my new private and there is no down time. Site is being loaded either from original host or the new one (KnownHost) with no problem.
Using ping, trace functionality and other stuff from network tools (online tool) gives interesting results:

my addon domain resolves to new private nameservers with no problem. Who IS returns my private nameservers, PING is returning my new IP address, everything works normal ...


Yet, trying to ping or read anything about those private nameservers fails like this

Retrieving DNS records for myaddondomain.com...
DNS servers
ns2.primarydomain.com
ns1.primarydomaincom

Query for DNS records for myaddondomaincom failed: Address not available

trace resolves normaly...

Ping:
Ping [ns1.primarydomain.com]
Bad destination


So, at this point, my conclusion is that being "ping-able" or not, has nothing to do with operability of a private nameserver.
I could not prove in advance that private nameserver will work, but it actually does work.
Results are easily visible within 1 minute literally, with most of the freely available surfing proxy-es (hide my ..., etc...all but the 'page wash' :) )

I hope that this experience will be helpful to some newbie next time.

My conclusion and advice would be (not so original) ... just do it!

Thank you KH for the support

Alex
 
Hi jeja7676,

I'm afraid I'm not understanding your reluctance to switch your nameservers. If all your content and email has been copied over to your VPS the switch from the old to the new would be seamless.

The only thing you might have to do is make sure that once propagation has taken place to check the old server for any email that may have landed there and copy it to the new one.
 
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