Domain Propagation is the period of time, or delay, involved in sending your domain’s address information to all the other name servers in the world. Name servers intentionally keep track of addresses for domains in their memory for a specific period of time which is defined by the administrator of the name server. This speeds up the process of looking up an address for a domain name. Unfortunately this “cached” information also stays in the name servers when it has been changed at the source of the original information (the domain’s registrar).

Name servers refresh themselves from once an hour to once a day. Generally 2-3 days time is a good estimate when a domain’s DNS information is changed at the domain registrar, after which everyone in the world can see the change.

You can speed up this process by clearing your local computer DNS cache by following:

DNS is the internet's phonebook, translating human-readable domain names into IP addresses. Sometimes, your computer's operating system stores a local cache of these translations to speed up future lookups. This is called the DNS cache. If a website's IP address changes, your local cache might be out of date, leading to connection issues. Clearing the DNS cache forces your computer to retrieve the most recent information from the DNS server. Here's how to do it on different operating systems.

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### Windows 10 & 11

On Windows, you use the Command Prompt to clear the DNS cache.

1.  Press the **Windows key** and type **"cmd"** in the search bar.
2.  Right-click on **"Command Prompt"** and select **"Run as administrator."**
3.  In the Command Prompt window, type the following command and press **Enter**:

    `ipconfig /flushdns`

4.  You will see a confirmation message that says, "Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache."

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### macOS

On a Mac, you use the Terminal application to clear the DNS cache. The specific command can vary slightly depending on your macOS version.

1.  Open **Finder**, go to **Applications** > **Utilities**, and open **Terminal**.
2.  Enter the command that corresponds to your macOS version and press **Enter**. You may need to enter your user password.

    * **macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra:**
        `sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder`
    * **macOS Sierra, El Capitan:**
        `sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder`
    * **OS X Yosemite:**
        `sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache; sudo discoveryutil udnsflushcache`

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### Linux

Linux users also use the Terminal to clear the DNS cache. The method depends on the specific DNS service your distribution uses.

#### systemd-resolved

If your system uses `systemd-resolved` (common on modern Ubuntu and Debian-based systems), use this command:

`sudo systemd-resolve --flush-caches`

#### dnsmasq

For systems using `dnsmasq`, you typically restart the service to clear its cache:

`sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart`

#### nscd

If your system uses the Name Service Cache Daemon (`nscd`), you restart the service:

`sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart`

In all cases, you may need to enter your user password to run the command with `sudo` (superuser) privileges.