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Old IP Address being returned after shifting website to new server (and IP)

I currently manage a few websites in my university. One of these websites (which is NOT hosted within the university) was shifted to another server with a different IP around 6 months back.

The problem is when someone using the university provided Internet goes to the website, he/she is SOMETIMES still directed to the old IP (not always).

This problem does not occur when accessing the website from outside the university (i.e when NOT using the university LAN). The newer IP is always returned.

I checked with the network administrators thinking that the DNS cache of the internal servers might be outdated. They said that the change in IP will take sometime to propogate to all the name servers. True, but isnt 6 months long enough?!! Anyway, they were not very helpful.

What options do i have other than changing the domain name?
I'd appreciate any solutions to this problem.

Thanks!
Tejas

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robrandon

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tejasxp

ASKER

I think its contacting the university's DNS servers. This problem is faced by all computers and users who are using the university's network resources.

Also, within the university, the IP of the website keeps switching between the old server and the new server maybe twice a day, or more.

robrandon

Perhaps they have round-robin setup for that particular server. Round-robin is when you setup more than 1 IP for a server to distribute the load. If they are managing your DNS, they the resolution lies with them.

Have you tried using the NSLOOKUP command to see what IP's are returned?
ex:
NSLOOKUP www.google.com

Put your server name in of course.

tejasxp

ASKER

Yep there was something wrong with the DNS server of the web hosting company.

Thanks!