Different Domain Registrars and New Nameserver Update Discrepancy?

Question

After migrating from different dedicated servers from completely different providers, I then had to update nameservers on hundreds of domains from different registrars.

I notice that GoDaddy DNS updates typically occur flawlessly within 2 hours. Netfirms, so far is jumping back and forth between the old nameservers and the new... but it's still within the 24-48 hour window - I am hoping it will stabilize.

I am wondering if such a discrepancy among domain registrars is normal, or if there might be something I've misconfigured?

Answer 1

It will all depend on the methods used by the individual registrars.

The definitive source should be the 'whois' service, so always check that first. This will list the names of the nameservers currently listed for your domain.

After that, check that the TLD's name servers have been updated by the registrar. On Unix:

% dig @<tld-server> <domain> NS

Where <tld-server> for .com might be a.gtld-servers.net, and for a .uk domain would be ns1.nic.uk, etc.

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If you don't know what your TLDs name servers are, use this:

% dig @a.root-servers.net. <tld> NS

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At this point, you should have been able to confirm that the higher levels of the DNS hierarchy have the right information - namely the current name servers for your domain.

For each such name server, then run:

% dig @<nameserver> <domain> SOA
% dig @<nameserver> <domain> NS

The first command will return the SOA record. In general each of them should have the same serial number present. If they don't, then their servers are not yet synchronised.

The second command returns the authoritative version of the NS records as maintained by your domain registrar. In general these should match whatever's in the TLD's DNS servers.