Yesterday I moved the last few Web sites off of my old server and onto a new one. After moving the files over to the new machine I updated the registry which tells the rest of the world where to look for my Web pages.

Generally it takes about 24 hours for everyone to stop looking at the old Web pages and start looking at the new ones. Generally the 24 hours starts at about 6PM EST. It takes about 24 hours because not everyone looks for updates at the same time. The slight offset in check-in times is commonly referred to as "DNS propagation" (even Wikipedia thinks this is actually a bad term to use). You can think of it as a game of broken telephone that doesn't actually break. I tell you about the new home for the Web pages, you tell your friends about the new home, they tell their friends, etc. While this could happen very quickly friends get sort of bored of passing along messages. They get efficient and only check for new messages once every so often. If the message relay gets out of sync it can take a long time (you could also think about traffic lights that are in sync--you drive through town quickly; vs. hitting every. single. red. fricking. light).

It's now been 24 hours. When I use my little WHOIS lookup tool to ask the internet where my Web pages are, I can see that the Web pages have been moved to the new server. But when I look at the Web pages in a Web browser I can see I am still looking at the old server. I know it's not a problem of my browser caching the Web pages, because if I change the content on the old site I can see the changes.

What's up with the disconnect? Why can I see that the address for the pages has been updated but I cannot see the pages in their new home? I called tech support to ask. Like many tech support calls this one started out the exact same way:

• "hello may I have your user account and other personal data to verify your identity. Great, thanks. What operating system are you using?"
• "My operating system is not relevant."
• "What operating system are you using?"
• "Linux."
• "I'm sorry we don't support Linux."
• "I don't need help with Linux. I need to know how often your DNS servers are updated with new records."
• "Um."
• "I need to know why your DNS servers are not registering the new information that I set yesterday for four domains, but WHOIS is showing the change."
• "Um. Can I put you on hold for a second?" (It was more than a second.)

Generally it's not a good sign when I get put on hold.

• "Can you please tell me what Web sites you moved? I can look them up for you."
• "Geotheatre.org, Candian spelling; EndAbuseNow.ca; GingerPress.com and MarketSide.ca"
• "Ok, that was A..N.. A..B..U..S..E.. N..O..W."
• "No. It's a domestic violence prevention site. E..N..D.. A..B..U..S..E.. N..O..W."
• "Oh. Um. GingerPress.com is working?"
• "Yes, I know that one is working, but how do I know if you're looking at the old server or the new server?"
• "Um. I don't know. When is it a good time for Tier Two to call you to follow-up on this question?"
• "As soon as they've got it resolved?"

I have been passed along to Tier Two tech support. Tier Two does not work Twenty Four Seven. They'll get back to me when they get back to me.

For the geeks in the crowd: remind me again what the tool is to do a lookup for a domain to see what serves it's actually using? [Ding! Time's up. The right answer was nslookup and/or dig.]

For the non-geeks in the crowd: DNS caching sucks. Four years ago Verisign went from updating information from twice a day to every few seconds..why is it that my ISP seems to take more than 48 hours to check for new addresses? Surely it can't be that taxing on the system to look-up the new information for requested domains.

Um. That last paragraph wasn't really for the non-geeks in the crowd either. Go check out how hugely adorable Liam is and then go look at Adrian's nifty sweater that Mel and I are drooling over. Ponder the differences between the spinning fiber and spinning fibre on Etsy. Get an unhealthy obsession for circuit bending via the lineup of speakers at NotACon (oh look! there I am!). Listen to Nena sing about red balloons and then wonder whatever happened to her. Start rumours about it. And maybe (if we're all very very lucky) when you're done all of that my Web sites will be correctly settled into their new homes.