Troubleshoot DNS Issues

Overview

Issue: Users do not see changes 

Issue: If you made a change to your DNS configuration, but your users are not seeing the changes at their location. 

Solution: Most likely, the changes have not fully propagated. In some cases, changes may take up to 48 hours to fully propagate. It is important for your DNS to be completely propagated before you make changes to a live website or a CDN. If you prematurely update your website, your users may have issues accessing your website. As a result, StackPath recommends that you verify the DNS status?

1. Use a third-party tool, such as What's my DNS?.
2. Update the search parameters to reflect the Type and Name you entered in the portal, and then perform a search. 
3. Verify that the listed results match the Value you entered in the portal. 

Another solution could be cached DNS responses. While the DNS changes may be fully propagated, the end users may have old DNS responses cached. To resolve potential cache issues, you can flushing your local DNS cache. 

Issue: Traffic does not properly route

Issue: If your DNS changes have fully propagated, but traffic still isn't routed as desired.

Solution: Your DNS configurations may not be correctly configured. 

For example, you set a proper A record for your apex domain (mywebsite.com), but you did not set the DNS record for your www subdomain. As a result, if you attempt to access www.mywebsite.com, you will receive an error message. 

In this example, you would need to verify that the A record or CNAME record for the www subdomain has been created and points to the correct IP address (A record) or hostname (CNAME record).

You can use a DNS debug tool, such as nslookup or dig to locate these issues. 

For example, you can use dig to verify if an A record exists for www.mywebsite.com:

Issue: Email does not route properly 

Issue: After you create a new DNS zone for a new domain or if you have switched to a new DNS provider for an existing website, you cannot send or receive email. 

Solution: Your MX records have not fully propagated or need to be created. 

Based on your email provider you use for your domain, you need at least one MX record for your domain to point to the correct mail server. 

To check if the proper MX records exist and where these records point to, you can use a DNS debug tool, such as nslookup or dig. 

In the following example, the domain mywebsite.com uses Google’s mail servers to manage email.

Issue: Incorrect name servers

Issue: After you create a DNS in StackPath, name servers still point to your domain registrar, and not to Stackpath.

Solution: While you set up the DNS correctly in the StackPath Control Portal, you need to update your domain registrar and point your domain name to StackPath.