When you change the Whois information, or the DNSs of a domain, it takes ~24 hours so it is updated through the world, BUT when you register a new domain name, in the same second it becomes Unavailable at all registrar websites.

Where does the registrar website go to check whether a domain is available or not?

Where is th MAIN WHOIS DATABASE?

Depends upon the domain extension... verisign for .com and .net, pir.org for .org, someone else for .info, etc. Most .country extensions have their own Authoritative Sources - e.g. Thialand - .th - It's the government Postal and Telcomm department and you need to wait quite a while to get the domain, and propagation is very slow - weeks.

Verisign updates their master ICANN DB twice a day and it propagates out from there. Typically to the ICAN members and then it cascards out to the world. If you're using an ICANN member for your desktop DNS, don't assume that because you can see it the rest of the world can as well.

The other Authoritative sources follow their own schedules but you usually need to have tyour name servers registered with them to get faster visiblity for to you. I have my nameservers registered with ICANN, pir.org, and the one that handles.info. The rest I pick up through normal net propagation which seem to take 5-7 days for world-wide propagation with some exceptions - like the .th domains.

For some god-forsaken reason, MX records seem to be slower to propagate than A records.

FYI - later this year verisign is going to changing their update schedule from twice a day to every fer seconds - interestng to see the impact on spammers and other domiain hoppers.

Borg's right. It just means the names will be available for distribution faster - not that they will be distributed faster. You might see up to 12 hour faster propagation of .com, .net, etc., but there are other factors involved.

DNS servers are supposedly governed by the TTL (Time To Live) setting for your domain which states the number of seconds to elapse before checking the domain source for updates to it. It's a suggestion, not a rule. The reality is that most DNS servers check once every 12-48 hours.

About a week before I move a domain however, I change the TTL to something like 5 minutes so when I do move it, it will be picked up faster by those servers who do honor TTL. The trick is to set it back 2 whatever your host recommends (12-48 hours usually) after the move. Many hosts either don't allow TTL changes or keep an eye on them as very low TTL is a symptom of a spammer. Not to mention the bandwidth wasted for the next 10 years once you've actually moved the domain.

The way DNS propagates is that DNS servers "close" (in Network topology) to the source DNS Servers get it first. Servers a little further out may check them and servers even farther out may check the second tier servers. Depending upon how frequently each server checks, it could take a week to propagate world wide.

One of the advantages to picking a host on ot close to Internet backbone facilities is not only speed of access, but also speed og DNS propagation.

I usually tell my clients to wait 1-3 days for US propagation, and 5-7 for world wide. .org and .country domains are on the slower side of those parameters. .info domains can be either fast or slow.

-boRg- wrote: It could still take a long time, if your ISP only updates it's IP cache every 48 hours is could take that long before you see the changes from your own connection.

so, Verisign holds the MASTER WHOIS DataBase for .com .net domains. and with any modification made, Verisign Whois database is updated first. is this right?

Don't think of it as the Verisign whois db. They administer the ICANN master whois db for .com, .net, and others. They don't own it. Prior to them, IIRC, it was internic, and prior to that, it was some consortium. In a couple of years, someone else may be the admin. Verisign picked it up as a marketing ployand it's reflected in their domain pricing and notoriously poor service. they are known for sending out spam indicating (without actually saying so) that you have to come to them to re-register a name.

There is no time/propagation advantage to updating dns through verisign than through any other ICANN registrar. All registrars have equal access.