Domain not pinging correctly but whois working

November 28, 2015 5.9k views
DNS
maturcotte
By:
maturcotte

Hi all,

I have redirected my domain name (godaddy) to point from FreeHostia to digitalocean server today on 2015-11-28. When I type whois site.com in my terminal, the ServerName is
NS1.DIGITALOCEAN.COM
NS2.DIGITALOCEAN.COM
NS3.DIGITALOCEAN.COM

When i go to https://asm.ca.com/en/ping.php The IP address that shows is for my Digital Ocean server

The issue here is that on my Local computer, when i ping site.com I ping the old IP address from the FreeHostia server. And when i type site.com in Safari, I still get the old website.

It says that it may take up to a day for the redirection to be done worldwide, but if the website I enter at https://asm.ca.com/en/ping.php gives me the right IP address in all countries, shouldn't it redirect to the right server by now ?

Thanks in advance for the help!

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1 Answer
jtittle1 November 28, 2015

@maturcotte

DNS updates can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. If you've previously accessed this domain, then you requests are most likely cached. You can try flushing your browser cache (entirely) to see if that helps. If it doesn't and you have broadband, pulling the plug on the modem and giving it 40-60 seconds before plugging it back in will normally send a refresh signal to your ISP which should either force the local cache to flush or do nothing at all (it all depends on the ISP).

DNS, unlike most things, doesn't update all at once (on a global scale - which has nothing to do with DigitalOcean). What may be resolving in California may not be in New York and Illinois (Chicago). At the same time, it very well could be in Florida but not overseas in the UK, China etc.

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  • Zachary_DuBois November 29, 2015

    @maturcotte Also, just to clarify. The whois information won't change when you mess with DNS. Some domain providers show the name servers on the whois but that is on their end and not how you system actually pulls information on "where to go" when you make a request for it. You can use tools like nslookup domain.tld and dig NS domain.tld. Also, a ping won't happen unless you add an A and/or AAAA record to the DNS configuration.

  • jtittle1 November 29, 2015

    @maturcotte

    You may also want to use a tool, such as this one, to see what the "root servers" are reporting for your domain. This will give you an idea of how far the resolution has gone thus far. If all RS are reporting the new DNS, then it most likely is your ISP's local cache or browser cache that is the issue.

    I remember a while back, my ISP, Charter Communications, used to heavily cache requests, so much that DNS would take nearly 3 days every after flushing everything on my entire network (that I had access to). After numerous complaints, it seems that they've let up on this a bit as it was causing some major headaches.

    Of course, you can always force-resolve your domain using the Windows hosts file, or for *nix, the /etc/hosts file. Simple drop in an entry that looks like:

    DROPLET_IP yourdomain.ext www.yourdomain.ext

    ... (this applies to both Windows & Linux), save and then, if it doesn't automatically resolve, do a quick reboot.

    Note: This modification would go on your local PC/Laptop, not the Droplet, just to be clear :-).

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