ISP mapped DNS to wrong IP!!! Need help fast. :(

[Barry Margolin]

In article <864jp4$fmk$1 at bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Danny Newberry <danny.newberry at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Hi there.
>
>If this is not the appropriate newsgroup for this I apologize. It seems to
>be the best I can find though.
>
>Here's my problem. I rented a static IP and dedicated ISDN connection from
>an ISP. They gave me the IP 216.162.109.49. But when he did the "reverse
>dns", or whatever he had to do to map our domain name to that IP, he mapped
>us to 216.162.98.9. It took me forever (2 days) and a lot of "strong" talk

That's forward DNS.  Reverse DNS goes from IP to name.

>to get him to double check everything and low and behold, the screw up was
>found. He fixed everything on the spot, at about 6pm CST, but the 'net still
>looks for our domain at the wrong IP as of 9am CST (1/18 and 1/19
>respectively, using att.net nameservers and icon-stl.net name servers).
>
>How long will it take for this to straighten itself out? WILL it straighten
>itself out? Is there anything I can do to speed up the process?

It depends on the TTL of the old record.  If you had told us what the name
is I could have told you the TTL, but without that information I have no
idea.  Typically TTLs are between 12 and 48 hours.  The ISP should have
been able to tell you this.

There's absolutely nothing you can do to speed up the process.  The TTL
tells caching servers how long they can continue to use a record before
querying the authoritative server again.  Once they've cached the old
record, they'll continue to use it until the TTL runs out.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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