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How to Use DNS Checker to Troubleshoot Website Issues

Let's talk about one of the most frustrating and the most confusing moments that any website owner can ever experience. You've just made a big and an exciting change to your website. Maybe you have finally moved your site to a brand-new and a much faster, web hosting provider. Or maybe you have just launched your beautiful, brand-new website for the very first time. You excitedly type in your domain name into your web browser to go and to admire your hard work, and… you see the old site. Or even worse, you just see a big, ugly, and a scary error message.

Your heart sinks. You frantically send a message to a friend who lives in a different city and you ask them to check the site for you. And they write back with a confusing message: "What are you talking about? It's working perfectly fine for me!" You then check it on your own phone, using your mobile data, and you see that it is working there, too. But it is still completely and totally broken on your own computer. What in the world is going on? Is your website haunted?

This maddening, this confusing, and this incredibly inconsistent problem is almost always caused by an invisible and a behind-the-scenes, internet process that is called "DNS propagation." So how do you check what is really happening with your website's address? How can you see what your website's address looks like from all the different parts of the world? You use a special, digital detective tool that can check your website's entry in the "global address book," all across the globe.

The "Internet's Address Book": A Quick DNS Refresher

Before we can even begin to understand the problem, we first need to do a super-quick refresher on what the DNS is. The DNS, which stands for the Domain Name System, is the official "address book" of the entire internet.

As you know, your website's real, technical address is a string of numbers called an IP address. But no one can possibly be expected to remember that. So, we use easy-to-remember and human-friendly, domain names, like mywebsite.lk. The DNS is the massive, the global, and the distributed system that is responsible for translating that easy-to-remember name into the numerical, IP address that the computers actually need to be able to find your website's server. All of the different entries in this giant, global address book are what are known as "DNS records."

The Great Global Update: What is DNS Propagation?

This is where things get really interesting. The DNS is not one, single, giant address book that is sitting in one, single place. It is a massive and a distributed network that is made up of thousands and thousands of different, individual DNS servers that are located in different data centers, all over the world.

The absolute best and the simplest way to think about it is to imagine that it is a big, global company that is trying to update its internal, employee contact list. The head office, which might be right here in Colombo, sends out a memo with a new and an updated phone number for one of its employees. Now, it is going to take a little bit of time for that memo to be able to reach all of the different and the various, branch offices in Kandy, in Galle, and in Jaffna. For a short and a temporary period of time, some of the offices will still have the old, outdated phone number in their records, and some of the offices will have the new, correct one.

DNS propagation is exactly like that "memo delivery time." When you make a change to one of your DNS records for example, when you point your domain name to a new and a different, web hosting server it can take anywhere from a few, short minutes to, in some cases, up to 48 hours for that new change to be updated across all of the different DNS servers around the entire globe. And during this propagation time, different people in different parts of the world will be sent to different, IP addresses.

Why This "Waiting Game" is So Important

This simple but incredibly important "waiting game" is a crucial factor in a number of very common and very important, website management tasks.

The most common one, of course, is when you are launching a brand-new website. When you first connect your new domain name to your web hosting server, it is going to take a little while for the rest of the world's address books to be updated with the location of your brand-new, digital house. The most critical and the most stressful time that this comes into play is when you are migrating your website to a new host. You are, in effect, moving your entire website from one, digital house to another. For a day or two, during the propagation period, some of your visitors will be sent to your old house, and some of them will be sent to your new one.

It's also incredibly important when you are changing your email providers. Your company's email is also tied directly to your domain's DNS records, which are called the "MX records." When you switch to a new email provider, like Google Workspace, the propagation of those new MX records can have a temporary impact on your email's delivery.

The Old Way: Pinging and Waiting Blindly

So, for years, what was the traditional and the very limited way of trying to check on this complex and invisible process? Well, if you were a technical person, you could use a command-line tool, like ping or nslookup, from your own, personal computer. This would tell you what IP address your own, local, and personal DNS server was currently seeing.

But here’s the problem. This tells you absolutely nothing about what a DNS server in London, or in Tokyo, or in New York is currently seeing. You are completely and totally blind to the global and the overall picture. So, for the most part, the only other option that we had was to just… wait. You would make your changes, you would cross your fingers, and you would just have to wait for 24 hours and hope and pray that your changes had successfully spread to everywhere in the world.

The Global View: The Power of an Online DNS Checker

This pressing need for a fast, for a simple, and for a truly and genuinely global view of our website's address book is exactly why a DNS Checker is an absolutely essential and an invaluable tool for any modern webmaster.

This type of tool is a specialized and a very clever utility that has the ability to be able to query a wide and a diverse variety of all the major, public DNS servers that are located in many, different parts of the world, all at the exact same time. The workflow is an absolute dream of simplicity. You just go to the tool. You will see one, single, and very clear input box. You just have to enter the domain name that you want to check. You will then usually select the type of DNS record that you want to look up, which is usually the "A" record for your website's main, IP address. You click the "Check" button, and the tool will then go out and it will ask a dozen or more, different DNS servers from all over the world, "Hey, what is the current, IP address for this domain?" It will then show you all of their different and of their various answers. And the fantastic thing is, with the kind of powerful and user-friendly tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can get this incredible, global snapshot of your DNS propagation, in an instant.

What to Look For in a Great DNS Checking Tool

As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most trustworthy ones are designed to be fast, accurate, and incredibly easy to use. They are built to give you the information you need, in the clearest way possible. A really top-notch online tool for checking your DNS records should have a few key features. It should include:

• The ability for the tool to be able to check your DNS records from a very large and a very geographically diverse set of different, public DNS servers, which should include the big ones, like Google, Cloudflare, and OpenDNS.
   
• A clear and a robust support for being able to check all of the most common and the most important, DNS record types, such as A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, and TXT.
   
• A fast and a highly reliable, query process that is able to give you your full results in just a few, short seconds.
   
• A clear, a simple, and an easy-to-read results table that makes it incredibly easy for you to be able to spot any of the inconsistencies between all of the different servers.
   
• A tool that is completely free for you to be able to use and that doesn't require you to do any kind of a sign-up.
   

A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any serious and for any modern website owner.

The Human Webmaster: Interpreting the Results

Now for the golden rule, the part of the process that turns a simple, raw data report into a real and an actionable piece of intelligence. The online tool has done its job. It has given you a list of all of the different results from all of the different servers. Now, your job is to be the human who understands what all of those results actually mean.

If you run a check and you see that all of the different servers around the world are all showing your new and your correct, IP address, then that is fantastic news! It means that the propagation is complete and that you are good to go. If you run a check and you see that all of the different servers are still showing your old IP address, then it means that the change has not yet started to spread, or that you might have made a mistake when you were updating your records at your domain registrar. You should go and you should double-check all of your settings. And if you run a check and you see a mix of both the old and the new IP addresses, which is the most common result of all, then this means that the propagation is currently in progress. This is completely normal, and it is a clear signal that all you need to do is to just be patient.

From a Confusing Wait to Confident Verification

Let’s be honest, the process of DNS propagation is a fundamental but an often completely invisible and a very confusing part of managing a modern website. A good, online DNS checker is the only, real way for you to be able to get a clear, a global, and a real-time view of this entire process. It is the tool that can turn a blind and a frustrating, waiting game into a confident and an informed, verification step.

So, it's time to stop the frustrating guesswork. The next time that you are launching a brand-new site or you are moving your website to a new host, you do not have to just sit there and you do not have to just hope that everything is working. By using a simple online tool to be able to check on your DNS propagation, you can see exactly what the rest of the world is seeing. It is the smart, the simple, and the professional way to be able to take control of your website's most fundamental and most important connection to the entire internet.