DNS Propagation Checker
by bigpresh on Mar.12, 2007, under Linux, System Administration
Ever wanted to check the result of a DNS lookup from various DNS servers, perhaps to see how far a recent DNS change has propagated – which servers are giving the new answer, and which still have the old answer cached?
I recently wrote a little Perl script to do just that. My DNS Propagation Checker will query a set of 10 servers at random and show you the results. (Be warned, it may be a little slow at times, because (a) it has to wait for the DNS servers (I might re-write it one day to do the requests concurrently) and (b) my poor little virtual server is a little slow and overloaded right now.
It’s Open Source software available under the GPL licence, but I haven’t tidied the code up and released it yet. If you would like a copy let me know – if there’s any interest, I’ll release it.
Do let me know if you find this tool useful :)
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9 Comments for this entry
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November 30th, 2007 on 8:59 am
Hi David – The script is awesome. Thanks for developing it.
November 30th, 2007 on 11:54 am
@btard:
Thanks for the kind comments, appreciated!
December 17th, 2007 on 1:16 am
Awesome. Wish I had known of it earlier. I’d be interested in the code or at minimum knowing what the 60 DNS servers are for possible customization.
December 19th, 2007 on 7:24 pm
@Don:
Thanks – glad it was useful.
No problems if you want the code – I’m planning to release it on my site soon, but would like to polish it up a little first. In the meantime I can send you the code as it is now – if you want it, drop me a mail to davidp@preshweb.co.uk.
It’s under a GPL licence.
April 14th, 2008 on 4:00 pm
Thanks David, this was very helpful as I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out when my site was going to propagate :)
April 15th, 2008 on 3:19 pm
@Dave Newman:
Glad it came in handy, thanks for the comment!
November 21st, 2008 on 9:55 pm
Great tool, I’ve recently created a tool that does a similar thing but extends on your idea. It allows you to select from a range of different record types, and is displayed in a nice Google maps overlay so you can instantly see how DNS is propagating around the world.
Anyhow, you can check it out at http://www.whatsmydns.net
November 22nd, 2008 on 8:35 pm
@Dan – excellent work – very useful tool, and very well presented too!
February 28th, 2011 on 6:35 pm
This came in handy when I moved my server to another host. You may want to check your list of servers because several are now timing out.