What Is Propagation?

We've all heard of it or about it at one time or another. It's that thing your domain name has to do before it will start working is about as much detail we know about it thus far. In the list of the top five or so questions I probably get asked on a daily basis, this rates up there at number three or two so I figured it was about time somebody tried to explain this propagation stuff in a way that would make sense to your average Joe or Sally on the street.

Now I will not lie to you. When first setting my account up at Total Choice Web Hosting, I thought when they told me my domain name had to propagate, I was a little baffled by it as well. My domain name was going to have offspring by itself? The dictionary defines propagation as "to spread something from person to person". Oh great, now my domain name was going to become the next black plague. Well not exactly.

To understand a little better, you have to start at the first. Think of the domain name system (DNS) as a bunch of computers and servers all connected together with the sole purpose of doing translations from numbers to names. Say you go to Mexico for a week, but you don't speak one bit of Spanish. Now you might have second thoughts before drinking the water, but first you need to learn how to say water. What do you do? You pull out a translation dictionary and look up the word water. There you find the meaning of water in Spanish is "aqua". That's what the DNS does, it takes the set of numbers that lead to your site and associates your domain name with it. Sounds simple enough right?

Now that we've had a translation successful trip to Mexico, let's take a trip back to your desktop computer. Now when you open up your internet browser, you usually type in the name of your favorite website such as http://www.totalchoicehosting.com . When you do that, behind the scenes while your waiting, that name goes to the closest DNS server available and it will locate the information from it's cache and then send you back all the glory that is the Total Choice Web Hosting website. Now if the DNS hasn't had that domain name come in before by your request it send the information you need to the next closest DNS server and if it doesn't know it keeps resending the information from DNS to DNS till it finds what it's looking for. The worst case that could happen is it says the domain name doesn't exist when you know that it does. You have to remember that some computers are only as smart as the people behind them, and after a second try then you'll probably be pointed in the direction of the domain that you desire.

Now are you beginning to see why domain name propagation is so important? It's the act of the domain name being passed through, to and between all the name servers in the world, so when somebody types in your domain name they get pointed to your site. Depending on site and providers, some say this takes 24 hours and others say it takes 72 hours. The real answer is that it will more than likely happen under 72 hours and probably earlier than that if all goes well.

So what happens if you try to go to your domain name before it's fully propagated? Well you might by chance be able to pull up your site, but your friend Judy from New York can not get to it yet. If this is the case, and your still under the 72 hour limit 99% of the time it's because your domain name isn't done with propagation. It might have reached the name servers around you, but it hasn't made it that far north to where it will pull up the site for Judy. This is why most hosting providers give you a temporary way to view your site such as the IP address of the server and then "~pattyann". This way you can have a more direct look at your site, before propagation is done.

Feel better now that you know what all this propagation buzz is about? Now you can go brag to your non-techie friends that you've learned something new and that they won't catch anything by your domain name propagating itself.

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