Since we moved to this new site, we're having all sorts of weird DNS-related problems. WorldPay sometimes can't see the site, some people are getting 'domain not resolved', and some email to me gets rejected.

The only thing I can put it down to is a rogue DNS record in a nameserver somewhere. Does anyone know enough about nameservers to find out what the problem might be?

We currently use ns.306gti6.com and ns2.123-reg.co.uk

I've contacted 123-reg to ask if they can check theirs, but any help would be most appreciated.

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Owain is your man. Although it's £20 PA for his services IIRC.

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Bianca Rallye-S
205 GTi6 on ITB's

Ash - making any change to the DNS zone file (and so updating its serial number) should re-propogate the DNS around the world.

Just make a change, add a dummy A record or something - that will update the serial number, other people's nameservers will then spot there's a new version and will completely re-cache the lot

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Membership expiring soon, get in contact on our new little forum project.

Ash - any idea what the TTL is on the domain name? All zone records have a Time To Live, which basically means "how long should third parties cache this record before reloading it" - it should be set to 24 hours (86400) but can be reduced down to five minutes or so if you know you'll be making changes in the near future.

If that's set to something higher than 24 hours, people will be caching stuff for far too long

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Technically it is - but they *should* (if sticking to the best practises) read the TTL from the zone file.

This is the header from my owainnorth.co.uk zone:

@ IN SOA ns1.titaninternet.co.uk. support.titaninternet.co.uk. (
2011030901 ; serial number
900 ; refresh
300 ; retry
604800 ; expire
3600 ) ; minimum TTL

The serial number (most people use the date it was last edited so it will always increase, but essentially the larger number is a newer record) - the minimum TTL (5 minutes in my case) is a record which says "we strongly recommend you clear this from your cache every five minutes". Obviously people can choose to ignore this in order to reduce load on their servers, but most large and respectable companies take note of it.

When we're doing a site move we change the TTL from 24 hours to 5 minutes (obviously has to be done more than 24 hours before, as other people will still have the 86400 TTL cached). This means when we come to change DNS, the majority of people will get the change within five minutes rather than 24 hours. It also makes it quicker to change DNS back if there's a problem with the new site.

If someone else's nameserver (BT for example) gets a request for 306gti6.com, it looks up the time it last cached it and its TTL. If the zone is still within its TTL, it just returns its own local copy. If it's expired, it looks to the authoritative nameservers (ns.306gti6.com and ns2.123-reg.co.uk) and asks for the latest serial number of that zone. If the latest version is higher than the cached version, it reloads the entire zone. If it's lower or the same, it doesn't bother.

Therefore normally just updating the serial number (by changing a record if you can't do it manually) is enough to flush the new settings around the globe. Just make sure it's on no more than a 24-hour TTL, else people will end up caching it for days, and any changes you make won't be reflected.

Having a look, I think the problem's with ns2.123-reg.co.uk. Doing a manual DNS lookup:

C:UsersOwain>nslookup
Default Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.232.10

> server NS.306GTI6.COM << query this nameserver
Default Server: NS.306GTI6.COM
Address: 80.82.125.196

> 306gti6.com << look for this record
Server: NS.306GTI6.COM
Address: 80.82.125.196 << finds it fine

Name: 306gti6.com
Address: 80.82.125.196

> server NS2.123-REG.CO.UK << query this nameserver
*** Can't find address for server NS2.123-REG.CO.UK: Non-authoritative answer

Looks like ns2.123-reg.co.uk isn't a valid nameserver. Therefore anyone trying to query that one will have problems. I notice not even 123-reg use that as a nameserver, they use ns2.webfusion.co.uk.

I'd check what the nameservers are meant to be, as that looks like a prime candidate for problems

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i still get this issue

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