How Domain Names Work
I often have to explain to clients why, when they first get a
domain name and website, it takes up to 48 hours for someone to
be able to see their website. This can happen if they switch web
servers, as well. The key to understanding this is understanding
a little bit of how domain names work.
Keep in mind, this explanation will be just a bit simplified, to
make it easier to understand. I don't like filling my
explanations to clients with technical jargon, so I'm going to
attempt to avoid that here.
The first thing to understand is this. Web hosting (or web
space) is completely different from your domain name. Where your
website's files actually sit has nothing to do with what your
site is called. In fact, you can even purchase your domain name
from one company and your web hosting from another. Many people
do.
So how, when someone goes to your web address, does it know
where your web hosting is? Each web host actually has a
numerical address. Let's say your web site is at
www.yourcompany.com, and your actual web hosting address is
216.60.153.87. How does my computer know that by typing in
www.yourcompany.com, it should actually go to 216.60.153.87?
It doesn't. Instead, it asks my Internet service provider (Cox,
AOL, SBC, etc.). Each Internet service provider has all that
information stored. So my computer sends my ISP the web address,
www.yourcompany.com, and my ISP actually looks that up at
216.60.153.87.
Hopefully that clears up a little bit the association between
the domain name (www.yourcompany.com) and what is referred to as
the IP address (or name server) of your web host
(216.60.153.87). Now, let's move on to why it takes up to 48
hours to update those records.
Let's say you buy a new domain name through Go Daddy. For every
domain name someone buys through them, Go Daddy has their domain
name and actual numerical address stored. That's thousands of
domain names. But when you buy a new domain from them, at the
beginning, they're the only ones who have that information. They
then have to get that information out to the rest of the
Internet.
So how does that happen? Let's use an analogy. How that spreads
is similar to how the flu spreads. If you were spreading the flu
on purpose, that is. Let's say you had the flu, and wanted to
spread it to as many people as possible, but could only infect
one person at a time. The key, then, would be getting those
people to then also infect others.
That's how the spread of your domain name works. Go Daddy (or
whoever), regularly contacts other computers out on the Internet
and passes on this information. Then those computers do the
same. However, one computer might send out this information
every hour, another every six hours, another every fifteen
minutes. The schedule of each computer is not the same.
So 48 hours is the maximum amount of time, the experts agree,
that it will take the information about your domain name to
spread to all those computers (called domain name servers, or
name servers for short). The technical term for this, if you're
interested in knowing, is propagation. 48 hours is the maximum
amount of time it takes your domain record to propagate to all
the domain name servers on the Internet.
As complicated as this sounds, I've actually simplified it quite
a bit. But the essential concept is there.