Any down time when transferring a domain name to another registrar? [closed]

Question

I have a domain name registered with Network Solutions and the name is used for domain name servers for tens of sites. I am sick of paying $34.99 to them while other registrars offer less than $10.00. I can't afford any dowm time when transferring the domain name.

If I transfer the domain name to another registrar, will there be any interruptions or down time during the transfer? The domain name needs to be active all the time.

Answer 1

When I've moved my sites, i always had the hosting set up in advance, so that both registrars essentially pointed to the same stuff, and then it didn't matter which one was active. That means that whenever the old DNS turned off, the new DNS kicked in, and it would already be pointing to my current sites.

Edit after Tony's comment:
Yes, it's normal that several are active at the same time, but only one of them is known by the Internet's many DNS servers. The next step is that the switch itself will take place a little while later, and within 48 hours all DNS servers will know that the registrar has changed. So in this time window, a visitor may get the new info or the old info -- and this is what should interest you:

1. If both registrars have the same information (this is the case when you don't change your hosting but only the registrar), then it won't matter which DNS a visitor asks, because he will get the correct info in any case. After those 48 hours or so, no machines will be asking the old registrar, and they can turn off your information.
2. If the registrars point to different hosting providers (not your situation, but explained for clarity), then it's just a matter of hosting the exact same content in both places, so users won't notice any difference. This can be tricky if there is dynamic content, like a discussion forum, but even that can be solved.

Answer 2

In theory, your web site should normally experience zero downtime as a result of this transfer. Your web site will not move to a new hosting service, just change which agency registers that name to you.

In practice, it depends on the actions taken by the two registrars : should errors be made, you will suffer some down-time until they are fixed. And where DNS is concerned, errors are common. Even well-known web giants have suffered downtimes because of DNS changes.

I suggest that you ask your new registrar for some guarantees, before signing up.

Answer 3

Depending on the registrars, the change should not be visible. However, if a registrar ceases to provide the NS1, NS2, etc information to the name resolution requests, you can have your domains hosted anywhere, nobody will know which authoritative server to ask, if no non-authoritative has the IP addresses cached.

One thinkg that could be done, if you have such control and know that none of you servers will change IP address for a while is to change the TTL, or time to live. If you give a long TTL for each domain, this means that anyone who resolved the IP address previously will cache it for much longer, without re-querying the authoritative domain name servers. The TTL can be setup in different ways, depending on how the name servers are configured and hosted. If you have full control, using zone files, for example, you can change the TTL for any domain either globally for the zone (or domain) or individually for each host.

Some name service providers such as Go Daddy give full DNS control, but over a web interface. There, for each entry, you can change the TTL. However, you are limited to what he offers you, not what you can put in the zone file.

Once the registration transferred to a new registrar, you can then get back to each of your domain or zone file, and change the TTL to a more reasonable duration, such as an hour or 24 hours.

In CANADA (for .ca domains), when you transfer a domain to a new registrar, CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) will email the administrative contact of a given domain, asking to confirm a domain transfer to the new registrar. This may be different for other general top-level domains (TLD) such as .COM, .NET, .ORG or country-based top-level domains.

You can find more about this and other DNS matters by searching on the web, for terms like "zone file" DNS, "time to live", "registrar", "authoritative". You will then find more information than you want about it.

In short, when you change registrar, there is no warranty of no-downtime, because there is no warranty that the old registrar will release the control over your domain to another registrar with any fuss.