How long does it take for my domain to point to my website?

When you sign up with ORC Web Hosting, we offer you a domain registration where the domain automatically points to the hosting website. If you purchased your domain elsewhere and your domain does not automatically point to our servers, you will need to update your name servers to point to our hosting.

Read also our article: What is web hosting?

If you have just transferred your domain to us, your previous name servers will be taken along by the previous provider. This means that you will have to enter our name servers in order for your domain to point to our hosting.
To do this, enter our name servers as follows:

ns1.orcwebhosting.ch
ns2.orcwebhosting.ch

Delete the name servers of your previous provider.

Below you will find some Background information on DNS and what you can expect when new name servers are set up, either when buying a domain or changing domains.

You want to redirect your domain? We have documentation for that as well: How to manage domain redirections in cPanel?

What is propagation and how long does it last?

Name server changes typically require 24 to 48 hours to fully function. This time period, also called propagation, is the estimated time it takes to update the root name servers and cache entries across the web with the DNS information of your website to update. Due to the propagation, not all visitors will be directed to your new nameservers on your new hosting account; some visitors will continue to be directed to your old nameservers on your old hosting account until the propagation is completed.

How quickly visitors are redirected to the new name servers depends on their physical location, their Internet Service Provider and a little luck. Once the distribution is complete, your website will appear on our server and your email will be fully functional.

There is no definitive way to tell when the propagation is complete. During the first 48 hours, even if you can see your website on the new server, your neighbor may still see it on the old server.

How does a DNS connection work?

Routing of all communication between computers on the Internet is done using IP addresses and not domain names. The following example is intended to illustrate this process.

Similar to our phone system, each active phone line has a phone number that is used to facilitate the connection from one line to another. To make a call, the calling phone must know the number of the line it wants to connect to.

Likewise, your computer must find the correct IP address of the website you want to visit on the server before it can send a request for a website to that server. The same applies to all other services such as e-mail, chat or games on the Internet. DNS entries function similarly to a telephone directory and link domain names with IP addresses so that these services can be reached.

DNS server functions

DNS servers can perform one or both of the two main functions: DNS host and resolver. DNS hosts manage the zones for their domains and respond to requests with the zone entries for these domains. If you make changes to your zone, you make changes to the host.

A resolver is a DNS server that sends requests to other DNS servers for records from their zones to try to answer the received requests. This type of request is called a recursive request.

When you connect to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), your ISP provides you with two or more resolvers that are responsible for handling the recursive DNS queries that your computer sends when you use the Internet.

Time To Live (TTL) & Remote Caching

Since most DNS records do not change very often, most resolvers are configured to look for previous results, cache them, and respond to subsequent queries with the cached results for a period of time until the resolver decides that the cached copy is too old. The turnaround time is the time it takes for the cached record to expire on all resolvers. Each record in the zone contains a Time To Live (TTL) value that specifies (in seconds) how long a resolver should cache the record.

A method for Shortening the transmission time of changes is to make the TTL value in the current zone before changes are made. However, the TTL change in the data set itself requires the time specified in the original TTL value to be transmitted before the runtime is reduced for further changes. In addition, some ISPs configure their resolvers to completely ignore the TTL value specified in the data set and instead cache the data set for a period of time that they specify. Some resolvers are configured to cache records for up to 72 hours, although most are configured for a shorter period. Ultimately, time solves the propagation problems.

Browser caching

Browser caching has absolutely nothing to do with DNS, but it can cause you to still see the old page content after a DNS change. Browsers store a copy of the page content that the browser previously displayed. You can clear the cache to get a new copy from the server.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Support Team to contact.