Knowledgebase

The reason your web browser is able to find your website, when you type in a domain name into your address bar, is because that domain name is "mapped" to an IP address by the global DNS servers on the internet. This is why you have to point your domain name to a set of name servers at your registrar. So that your registrar can tell people who type in your domain name where to go on the internet to find you.

Every Internet Service Provider in the world updates their DNs records (containing your domain name and the IP address it maps to), at different times. This is why some people can pull up your site before you can after switching hosts sometimes.

This problem is even more compounded by the fact that your own computer keeps a set of DNS records, which it gets from your ISP on a regular basis. If your ISP AND your local copy of the DNS records are incorrect, because they have not been updated recently enough, this can cause your domain to appear offline when in fact there is no problem at all.

Luckilly there is a solution for some users.

First, youll want to dump your windows DNS cache, so that a new copy will be forced from your local internet service provider. To do this, in windows XP follow these steps.

1. click "start" on your windows XP bar
2. click "Run"
3. type in "cmd" and hit enter.
4. a black box will open, in this box type: ipconfig /flushdns
5. hit enter

You should now get a message on screen which states "Windows XP Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache". This means your windows XP DNS records were synced with your local ISP's records. This does not mean however, that your ISP has correct records. Were just making sure you have the latest records from your ISP.

If your ISP has updated its DNS records, the IP address your ISP has, should match the one your site is actually hosted on. In Cpanel you can see the IP address your site uses. To find out the IP address your site is actually at on the internet, follow these instructions.

1. Login to Cpanel
2. If you see "expand stats" on the left navigation panel, click it.
3. look down the left side of the page for either "shared IP address" or "dedicated IP address".
4. Write down the IP address from step 3

Now to see if your Local ISP and your windows computer are using the IP your site is actually hosted on, do the following:

1. If you still have the black box open from above, type: ping www.yourdomainname.com
2. hit enter

Windows will notw attempt to contact your website, using the IP address it thinks your site resides at. If the IP address it is attempting to ping differes from the one you wrote down, then your site has NOt propagated fully to us, OR you have incorrect nameservers setup at your registrar. Until the IP address your computer has, and the one its hosted on by us match up, you wont be able to get to your website, you wont be able to get email, FTP or anything else, since your not actually being sent to our server, but somewhere else, most likely your old host.

Add to Favourites

Print this Article