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Understanding TTL (Time-To-Live)

The TTL or Time-To-Live is what dictates how long it will be until your computer or server refreshes its DNS cache.

This time is defined in seconds and the default settings can be found in the Zone File.

This Knowledgebase article will help you understand TTL.

Understanding TTL (Time-To-Live)

Generally, DNS propagation takes 24 to 48 hours to complete whenever any changes are made to your DNS Zone File. Lowering the TTL prior to making these changes will reduce the time required for propagation.

Let’s say you want to change the email on your domain from ChemiCloud to Google Workspace. If you make this change now with a default TTL of 43200 (12 hours), it will take up to 12 hours until all email is being delivered at Google’s Mail Servers instead of ChemiClouds. In the time between, mail will be delivered either to your ChemiCloud mailbox or your mailbox at Google, just depending on when the server sending that message last updated it’s DNS cache.

You can lower the TTL to make these changes take effect faster.

To do this, you’ll need to modify the TTL for each entry in your DNS Zone File.

Step 1: Login to your cPanel. There’s a lot of ways to do this, but the sure fire easiest way is to login to your Client Area, then open your cPanel.

Step 2: In your cPanel look for the Domains section (4th from the top) and click Zone Editor.

Once the Zone Editor opens, you’ll see a list of your domains.

Click the Manage button on the right of the domain for which you want to change TTL.

Step 3: You will see a list of your DNS Records.

You’ll need to edit them each one at a time. To do this, click the Edit button which is located under the Actions column to the right of each record. This will allow you to change the TTL and other values for the record.

Step 4: After clicking Edit, change the TTL to your desired value.

When you’ve set your value, click Save Record to save the changes:

Complete this for each DNS record entry you want to modify. You will need to wait the amount of time the previous TTL was set before DNS servers globally will begin to cache the records at the new TTL. Once it has elapsed, any changes you make will occur within the TTL time you have specified.

And that’s how you change the TTL values in DNS entries for your Domain.

That’s a wrap!

 

 

Updated on May 3, 2023

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