name server changes to domain

For anyone who has moved name severs for a domain name, what is the longest you ever saw it take?

I have a customer who (against my will) signed up for yahoo webhosting. They wanted me to move their site from the existing host to the new host. It really only involved changing the name servers at network solutions to point to yahoo, and upload the site via FTP.

Well that was Sunday morning, and now its Tuesday morning, and still no site.

Network solutions changed the name servers properly and it is pointing to yahoo now, just no site, and yahoo said they can't help me until the site has been down for 72 hours. Then they will look at it, which is total BS. I have never seen a .COM web address within the US take more than a few hours to propagate, they are telling me it takes a full 72 hours for this to happen, which even network solutions said is crap.

So what is the longest you ever saw this wait take?

It once took me 56 hours, longest ever. And I think this was in the early days, nowadays it's taken me no more than 5 hours.

However, having said that, I am currently attempting to change registrars for a domain, and it's been 48 hours, but have received no email. So it's possible...

This wasn't a registrar change though, this was simply a name server change (all within the US) of a .com name.

The guy told me some other odd ball domain extensions for other countries can take a while, or overseas takes a while to change over, but inside the US should happen very fast. All the whois data points to the right place, however I get no DNS resolution of the domain now.

What is even more odd to me, is why I get nothing at all. I figured when a domain is pointing to name server A, and you have a site setup with that host, you see the site, then you change to name server B, at which point you SHOULD either get host A or host B when you visit the site, depending on the propagation, not "page can't be displayed" with no DNS resolution. That is why I think something is wrong, but yahoo claims it is totally normal

Wow... you're in a tough boat. Network Solutions and Yahoo... two of the WORST companies to deal with for web stuff. Yahoo doesn't know sh*t about what they're talking about, which was made blatantly obvious to me at my last job... and NS is a bunch of thieves. They just don't care. Both of my sites are registered with GoDaddy. One of them was originally hosted with GoDaddy, but I bought a hosting plan from DiscountASP, and when I switched the DNS, it took about two hours to update. At my old job, we'd tell clients anywhere up to 24 hours, but most got it done within six. And on a side note, drop NS and Yahoo if at all possible. They both suck. Probably each other.

I use godaddy and discountasp and also orcsweb for personal/customer hosting. I even have a few 1&1 accounts (didn't like them, but have a few there from when I tried them out).

All in all, I manage about 40 different websites for various customers and myself, so I get hosting where it meets the needs of the given site.

GoDaddy is generally pretty flexible as long as you aren't trying to do anything too crazy server wise, so I really have little to complain about with them.

DiscountASP is more expensive but very robust and they give you the ability to control more.

Orcsweb is really really good, but very expensive. I have free hosting with them, so I have NOTHING to complain about there.


So anyway, NS wasn't much of an issue, because I didn't have to do anything with the account there but change name servers from one host to the other. In the end, after over 48 hours of still no site up at yahoo, I told the guy I give up and we should change the name servers back. So I changed them back to the original host, and wouldn't you know it, about 1.5 hours later, everything back up and normal. So yahoo just lost me FOREVER as a customer (unless MS decides it want's to buy them again, in which case maybe I would look into them again ;) )

I was told most ISPs will take a maximum of 48 hours to refresh so they can see the updated name servers. What you're going through is a bit long and I suspect something else is the issue.

Typically my domain changes are completed within a few short hours.

With netsol, their changes are determined by the domain name already existing on them or if its a new name. If new then it takes up to 24 hours. If its already hosted on netsol then the changes usually take between 2-4 hours from what I have seen.

Now if you are changing name servers then it can take 24-36 hours.

I was told by Network Solutions tech support that standard .COM names within the US are repropagated every few hours, and it should generally never take longer than that. He said some offbeat other country domain extensions and such can take 24-48, and he said .COM and other common ones can take longer to propagate overseas. However .COM name server changes in the US should be quick.

The biggest annoyance to me was this:

If you have a domain name, and it points to name server A, and you move it to name server B, the way I have always seen it work, was when you try to visit the domain name, it resolves to server A until the propagation has hit, then it will resolve to server B.

So the site should never actually go down, so long as you had a site up to begin with at server A, and you have uploaded the site contents to server B prior to the switchover.

So after about an hour and a half of moving the name servers the first time, the site just went offline, and would not resolve to a DNS. All whois lookups showed the name servers for the domain as the new one (yahoo). So the domain SHOULD have been resolving to yahoo, however my guess is their name servers were not routing to the IP of the actual server hosting the domain. I totally believe this was a problem within yahoo, and they did nothing to try to help me.

From a financial point of view, you aren't as important to yahoo as you are to a smaller company. Where you leave, 50 others will step in to take advantage of whatever (little) service they may provide. A smaller company knows that reputation is important and so will try to do more to please you.

This, though (and sadly) isn't what I see even today with so much competition around.

I usually don't need much help when it comes to these things, as I understand how the majority of it all works. So if I do call a company looking for help, I am always armed with as much information as I can throw at them so they know I have done all the BS things they are going to tell me to try, because I know that its not the issue.

However Yahoo just decided to play the waiting game and the 7 times I called them, they just said "we won't make a trouble ticket until the domain is not up for 72 hours". Just insane. Hopefully enough people walk away, that there is no one to fill the gap.

Last time I pointed to new name servers I had the very odd issue of some people being able to view it on the old server, some on the new server, and some (including myself) where some items loaded from either the old or new server and other items acted as if they didn't exist. Once the propagation finished it was fine but very odd and something I thought was impossible.

Interesting. If some items were loaded from either servers (I'm assuming images/stylesheets) then it could be a problem at your ISP, possibly, or Firefox (it caches DNS information) causing it to request certain items (page, images) from the old server and CSS information and background images from the new server... well, ok, not entirely plausible, but you see what I'm getting at.