Switched sites server/hosting and DNS. How can I tell when running off new server?

Hosting
1

Switched sites server/hosting and DNS. How can I tell when running off new server? So currently the site is sitting on both servers while I wait for the DNS to propagate to the new server address. Once it’s complete I will delete the site on the old server. How can I tell when DNS propagation is 100% complete? Is there a tool to look this up?

And different servers across the world will update at different times right? So to be safe I guess I should just wait the 48 hrs. Still though is there a tool? I googled it and tried some DNS lookup tools but none of them seems to show me what I was looking for.

Thanks,
E

2

ping yoursite.com check to see if the IP address matches that of the old host or the new host. :slight_smile:

And yes, I’d still wait 48-72 hours before deleting it so it can propagate everywhere.

3

How the heck do I ping my site?

4

From the command line:

ping yoursite.com
5

When I moved to a new host, I placed a comment in the HTML at the new server so I would know for certain which place I was getting the content from.

Also, you should be able to find some free web proxy servers around the world you can use to test which server is delivering the content. This will help with DNS caching issues as they will not have your old IP address cached whereas your computer or ISP may.

Free Web Proxy 1 - UK and possibly USA IP addresses.
Free Web Proxy 2 - Germany and Seychelles IP addresses when I tested.

And you can always examine your visitor logs on your old server to see when traffic has died off. That will give you an idea of when you can shut your old server down.

6

I ended up finding a web tool for this. But for shitts and giggles I tried the ping via cmd. All that gave me was the IP, size, and speed. No DNS.

7

You should have two separate IP addresses, one for the old, one for the new. So IP would identify which one it was hitting, but since you found a tool, that works too :slight_smile:

8

Ahh stupid stupid me. Yes the IP. I was just focused on the DNS.

9

This is what we do when we have to do hard cutovers like this:

  1. Some time beforhand, drop the DNS TTL down to something absurdly low (eg 1 minute)
  2. At appointed time, point DNS at new host, also add a new host to the app (eg www2.example.com)
  3. Give it a few hours – about 10x your absurdly low TTL at least – and then replace the old host with a redirect to that secondary host
  4. Wait for traffic to die on secondary host
  5. Kill secondary and old host completely.
10

Bear in mind, just because DNS has propagated for you, it’s not necessarily propagated for everyone else. Many visitors may be on ISPs and networks that have long TTL times, or even ignore them :- you can never be 100% certain that ‘everyone’ is ok, but just make a judgement as to when (as wwb_99 has pointed out) the majority are seeing the new server.