Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of kam_uk
kam_uk

asked on

Steps when changing DNS/MX records

Hi All,

I asked this question before, which was answered well, but I had some additional questions, so thought to ask a new questions.

My domain is kam.com, MX = mail.kam.com

There is a sister company (completely seperate) - sister.com, MX = mail.sister.com.

Sister has a website, www.sister.com, and an A record for this;

sister = 66.9.56.2

The current TTL for Sister's resouce records is 24 hours.

Ours and our sister company's IT will be integrated, so that their mail will go via our mail servers. We will also take ownership of their domain completely, however the website should remain as is. There should be minimal downtime for mail whilst the MX records propogate round the world.

a) For the domain ownership, would I be correct in thinking that each domain on the Internet has a registrant who registers the domain on behalf of the Internet Naming org (not sure of the name?!).  How would we actually take ownership of the domain?

b) Does taking ownership of the domain relate to making our public DNS servers the authorative servers for the sister.com domain, or is it a completely seperate task? Out of interest, is it possible for our servers to be authorative for the domain, but the domain to be still owned by a seperate org/held by seperate ISP?

b) For the mail routing change, their MX needs to be changed to mail.kam.com, but to minimise the time taken for the change to be made, should be amend the TTL of the resource records a couple of days before the change? That way all the DNS servers around the world would update their caches quicker?

c) Should we take ownership of the domain *before* the MX change, after the MX change, or does it not matter?

d) In order to keep the A record for www.sister.com as it is, is there anything special we need to do?

Many thanks in advance! It's the first time I'm doing this, so just want to make sure I get it correct!

Avatar of Chris Dent
Chris Dent
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image


a) Transfer of ownership has to be agreed and initiated by the current owner (typically the Administrative contact listed in the WhoIs record).

b) Separate task, although normally carried out at the same time. The domain can be shifted between registrars by updating the Tag on the domain.

Anything is possible :) It depends whether or not you have access to set the NS records for the domain. You can see the current values in the WhoIs for the domain.

b (2)) There are a few ways to work this.

Reducing the TTL is a good option, but you must be aware that not all ISPs honour low TTLs. For instance, no matter what you put mail operators like AOL will still take a few days to notice the change.

Another way to approach it is to add a new, lower priority (higher numeric), MX record with the new delivery location. That one tends to work best when nothing listens on the new name until the change-over, and when the old server will be turned off (and therefore become unavailable).

c) Does not matter as long as you have enough control of the domain to make the change.

d) Varies from ISP to ISP, it's really something you'll have to raise with those you transfer it to and from.

Chris

PS there's a good enough WhoIs engine here: http://www.geektools.com/whois.php
SOLUTION
Avatar of Steven Vona
Steven Vona
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of kam_uk
kam_uk

ASKER

Thanks all...

Just a couple of questions...

i) When referring to taking ownership of the sister.com domain, what is the correct term - ownership of the sister.com zone, ownership of the sister.com domain name space, ownership of the sister.com domain name etc?

ii) If I make my DNS servers authoratative for sister.com, is that the same as setting the sister.com NS servers to my DNS servers, i.e. do they mean effectively the same thing?

Thanks!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial