cachingdns

How to force DNS refresh for a website?


I'm moving my web application to another server and in the next few days I'll refresh the DNS to point to the new IP location.

Unfortunately some browsers and SOs keep a DNS cache that will make users point to the old IP location. Some users are rookies and they'll not refresh the DNS cache manually and I know we'll lose a lot of them in the first weeks after this change.

Is there anyway to force this DNS cache to refresh so it'll be transparent for our final users?


Solution

  • As far as I know, a forced update like this is not directly possible. You might be able to reduce the DNS downtime by reducing the TTL (Time-To-Live) value of the entries before changing them, if your name server service provider allows that.

    Here's a guide for less painful DNS changes.

    A fair warning, though - not all name servers between your client and the authoritative (origin) name server will enforce your TTL, they might have their own caching time.