DNS propagation is the process that it takes to update your Domain-Name-System records.
DNS records are recursively cached by various providers, such as your phone’s primary DNS resolver, most likely 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. These resolvers usually respect a TTL value that you can set when you create a DNS record.
TTL values tell DNS resolvers how long they can cache a record for before needing to query the nameserver of a domain for new records. Some resolver might not respect this TTL or expire records sooner, allowing for faster “propagation.”
Seting a short TTL can be advisible as it allow you to make change faster.
Nameservers #
Nameservers are also a form of a DNS record. Nameservers usually have a much longer TTL (24-48 hours) because they change very infrequently and therefore can be cached for longer to reduce the amount of lookups needed.
The downside of this is that many resolvers will have outdated versions of your nameservers once you update them with your domain registrar as it will take some time for cached versions to expire. When you point your nameservers to our nameservers, it can take 24-48 hours for your nameservers to fully “propagate” and for resolvers to fetch your new nameservers.
This means, it can take 24-48 hours before you can use cPanel to manage your DNS and use our hosting service.
Usually, propagation takes less time, because resolvers will fetch new copies more quickly, but we say 24-48 hours because that is how long it usually takes to full propagate to all resolvers worldwide.
Can You Speed It Up? #
Unfortunately, we cannot speed up the process of DNS propagation or Nameserver propagation because we have no control over the resolvers themselves (8.8.8.8 is maintained by Google, 1.1.1.1 by Cloudflare, etc) which is where records are being cached.
The only thing you can do is wait.
To reduce the amount of time you need to wait for future changes, we advise setting a lower TTL, such as 5 minutes or 1 hour.
