How to shorten DNS propagation effect

Question

Atm i have a domain example.com, it uses dedicated server, and it uses "ns1.example.com" and "ns2.example.com" as nameserver. Now i want to change to another dedicated server (with different IP obviously).

How to shorten DNS propagation effect so that all visitors that open my domain will be pointed to the new server quickly?

At this moment i am lowering the TTL value on old server (to 5 minutes) hoping that once i change the nameserver, all visitors will be pointed to new server. Am i correct? If not, can you give me suggestion?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

3

Short answer: You can't.

Many DNS servers will have policies that override the TTL that you specify. By reducing the TTL, you are probably doing everything you can though.

This other question may be of interest to you:

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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answered Sep 17 '12 at 21:13

Bryan

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '12 at 21:19

The first thing to do is update the TTL in your domain's SOA record and make it much smaller say, 600 seconds (10 minutes).

IN  SOA     ns1.example.com.  you@example.com. (
                       2            ; serial number <<<<update this
                       3600         ; refresh   [1h]
                       600          ; retry     [10m]
                       86400        ; expire    [1d]
                       3600 )       ; min TTL   [1h] <<<<reduce this to 600

Update the serial number to make sure that the changes are noticed.

This should reduce the TTL for your DNS records to 600 seconds but it will take up to the current TTL seconds for this change to be noticed around the internet.

Now when you change your IP address it should only take 10 minutes for it to be noticed. In practice though it can still take quite a long time.

How to shorten DNS propagation effect

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