Newbie: When does zone transfer kick in?

[Chris]

Hi all,

I have a simple question. I am trying to get DNS working for my domain
(tourneyland.net). I have it working locally, meaning that if
computers on my LAN use my local name server (that I configured), they
can find www.tourneyland.net just fine. So far so good. So I put in a
zone transfer request with the InterNIC a couple of days ago. I just
did a whois, and my record has been updated and is using my machines
(ns1.tourneyland.net and ns2.tourneyland.net) for the DNSs.

I would think this means that now anyone can get at
www.tourneyland.net, using any name server. But they can't. Friends
can't get there, and neither can I if I use my ISPs name servers
instead of my local name server.

I'm assuming the problem isn't with my named.conf or anything like
that, but rather with a misunderstanding of the zone transfer system.
Do I have to wait a few days for everyone else's DNSs to 'catch up'? I
would think not (they should be going right to the .net root server),
but maybe I'm wrong. One thing maybe I should mention is I'm not doing
anything about reverse DNS yet. I've been putting that off due to its
difficulty (esp since my ISP has to cooperate) and the fact that I
didn't think I needed it to just serve Web pages, but I suppose I
could be wrong.

Thanks,
Chris