.co.za Domains

[Matthew]

Any of you have problems with .co.za, .co.nz domains? They seem to be VERY strict when it comes to DNS and having things setup correctly. Things like SOA, RDNS all needs to match perfectly for it to even go through a simple name server change.

It would be nice if all places were as easy as .com's .co.uk's and many other extensions

 

[Matt Midgley]

No experience with .co.za or .co.nz yet. I tried to grab a .eu when they appeared online but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. On the subject of name server changes, I needed to change them for a .co.uk and it took more than 48 hours. I was quite surprised when the recent .net and .com domains I have dealt with have been almost instant.

Regards,
Matt

 

[Matthew]

I think it's been about the last 18 months to 2 years that .com's have propogated so quick. They used to be 24 - 72 hours but suddenly became almost instant. When registering a domain I have seen a .com be ready with in just a minute or so of registering and setting the name servers.

It's a handy change and I wish other domain extensions would follow.

 

[Will]

I think it's been about the last 18 months to 2 years that .com's have propogated so quick. They used to be 24 - 72 hours but suddenly became almost instant. When registering a domain I have seen a .com be ready with in just a minute or so of registering and setting the name servers.

It's a handy change and I wish other domain extensions would follow.

Is that a registrar-set thing, then? I always had my own theory on how DNS propogation works. (I made this up - so accuracy is probably 0% - I'm only telling you because some of my theories are so technically incorrect it's funny!)

I've registered a few domains (.uk) in the past and had very variable propogation rates. I found that if I hit the URL before properly registering the nameservers then registered the nameservers - propogation seemed to take 24 - 72 hours. I thought it was this;

My ISP has never visited domain.co.uk - so when I hit it my ISP queries nominet (The UK registrar) for the domain. It gets a DNS record and keeps it cached for up to 72 hours. If I hit before the registration is complete - it gets a "No DNS record" or a "Nameservers not set" record - which it also keeps for up to 72 hours.

I also find that different ISP's have different cache-rates. My ISP at work seems to cache for about 5 hours whereas my home ISP caches for upto 72 hours.

I wonder just how wrong I am on this one!

 

[Matthew]

To be honest I am not sure. I know how propagation normally works, but I am not sure what changed to make it quicker on the .com's. I just think it's cool that it does and leave it that way and do my job It might be that the registrars push our the new DNS entries across all root servers rather then publish to 1 and the others pick up on a 24/72 hour cycle. I honestly am not sure though.

I find exactly the same as you with trying a domain too early after registering although with my ISP (who I thought was the same as yours) it only takes a couple of hours to flush the record. You might be querying different DNS server to what I do though.

If you ever get bored of waiting and want to test your site then create an entry in the hosts file found at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ (hosts has no extension). You can then enter the IP of the server where your site is ready and waiting and enter domain.co.uk and then on the next line enter the same IP and www.domain.co.uk. This overides your DNS and looks up that entry locally and allows you to load your site on your PC so you can test while waiting for propagation.