changing company name

[iWEB]

hey, we are in the middle of taking over a tiny hosting company and are merging both companies to form 1 new (please dont ask why, to be blunt, its a long story that has nothing to do with you :))

problem is i talked to my datacentre about changing nameservers etc just to ensure there isnt huge downtime, all the customers are in the same country as us so im thinking that might make propogation quicker for them.

can any provide help/information etc on the easiest way to change nameservers without huge downtime.

[kickmyserver]

Well, I'm switching "hosts" so this is what I'm doing...

I sat everything up on the new server for the customer's (Their web files, databases, etc..) as if it were the old server.... Cpanel done all this for me, including creating all new www & pop hosts on the new IP. All I had to do was go into godaddy, switch the IPs of my name server that everyone uses over to the new hosts' IP, thus switching all servers who use ns1.mydomain.com as their name server over to the new IP. Then I kept my old host up for about two weeks, allowing time for the "world" to switch over to the new host... without any downtime. This may be more complicated for you if you do not pay for your customer's domains, as you'll probably have to ask them to switch the IPs of ns1 & ns2.yourdomain.com to the new host's IP or ask for their login to their DNS panel and do it for them (As some people don't 'get it') :)

Hope this helps!

[iWEB]

yeah, but it remains the same server, same ip etc, all that is changing is ns1&ns2.oldhostname.com to ns1&ns2.newhostname.com. i understand the long involved process of changing the name servers for each customers domain, i just just hoping someone had a majic way of minimizing this stupid propogation period.

[Trigger]

The nameservers are just to get the DNS lookups to the server, the server listens on the IP address not the virtual name (ie. ns1.domain.com) and will respond with the details.

So if you set up the new name servers for the new domain with the registrar using the same IP's as the old ones and wait for propagation to occur first, then you can then set them up on the server sharing the same IP's.

Tell evryone to make the switch, wait awhile for them to do it (say a week)then delete the old nameservers on the server and the registrar.

[othellotech]

like trigger said ;)

basically setup the new nameservers on the original ip's
create the appropriate host records for the root servers
wait 72 hours
go through all the domains and change the nameservers to the new ones