

When you clear your DNS cache, your device will purge all local DNS records which have been previously resolved and cached regardless of the TTL set on the record. What happens when you flush the DNS cache? If this is the case, flushing your DNS may help resolve the issue.Īs you can see, there are a variety of reasons for needing to clear your DNS cache, so it is worth clearing your DNS cache to eliminate it as a possible point of failure.

Seeing old versions of a website: If changes have been made to the DNS configuration of a website, you may not be connecting to the new version. This is often the problem when you have changed domain or hosting providers. If, however you know that the page does exist, as it is your own website then this may mean that you are connecting to an old server which does not have the page you are after. Page not found errors: If you are getting a 404 page not found error, then it may mean that the page has simply been deleted. Unable to access websites: If you are unable to access a website, which you normally have no problems with then this may indicate a DNS cache issue. If you are a website owner and you have recently made changes to your domain, name servers, or DNS hosting providers settings and are having troubles accessing your own website, then it is likely that you will run into DNS caching issues, and you need to flush your DNS cache. There are a few signs that may indicate that you need to flush your DNS, some of these include:ĭNS records don't match: You can easily check DNS propagation globally for any domain name, and if your local system is not returning the same results then this may indicate that you need to flush your DNS. How do you know if you need to flush your DNS cache?
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If this occurs, then the cache needs to be cleared for your system to know how to communicate with the new server. For this reason, issues may arise if DNS changes to domain names DNS configuration have been made and your system has a cached result which is not yet due for renewal. The TTL of DNS records are configured by the domain administrator and can be anywhere from a few minutes up to 3 days or even longer in some cases. Your device will not attempt to check for an updated record from the DNS server if this time has not yet expired. The amount of time that a result is cached on your local device is known as the TTL (Time-to-Live). Sometimes old results will be cached for a long period of time and your device will continue to try communicating with the IP address of the old result even though they may have since been changed, this can often result in you not being able to access a website, game server, or other online service as you would expect. These devices will automatically cache IP addresses and other DNS records when they perform a DNS lookup request the first time you visit or use them.ĭNS results are cached in order to speed up subsequent requests to the same website or service without needing to perform an additional DNS lookup. DNS records are stored locally in a cache on your computer, phone, tablet, or even smart TV.
