Resolving a hostname means to convert a hostname of the form “wwww.domain.com” to an IP address.
You can use this
DNS lookup tool to check if your hostname is pointing to the correct IP address.
There are several reasons why a hostname is not resolving correctly or pointing to the correct place on the internet.
Domain registrar
If you are using your own domain name yourdomain.com, the problem may not be with your DNS provider,
it could be with your registrar, the registry or something else entirely:
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The domain name is not registered.
To use a custom domain name such as yourdomain.com, you need to first purchase it.
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The domain name has expired.
Domain names are registered for a fixed period of time, commonly 1 year. At the end of this year the domain name needs to be re-registered.
Check the expiration date of your domain name here.
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The domain name could be suspended for some reason. Check the status of your domain name here.
DNS hosting provider
If you are using our DNS service
and you are seeing IP address A in the domain current status in the control panel and IP address B when you do a
DNS lookup.
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Check the domain name is using our name servers.
You need to update the name servers for your domain name to point to us at your current domain registrar.
After you make the change, you can verify the name server change in the WHOIS response.
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Make sure that the domain name is using only our name servers.
If you have our name servers as well as third party name servers listed for your domain name, you will experience random DNS resolution issues.
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Name server propagation delay.
If you have just pointed your domain name to us and the domain name is not resolving correctly,
it could be due to name server propagation delay. Check if the name server change has fully propagated here.
The name server propagation may take up to 24 hours even though the WHOIS update may take only a few minutes.
Note: If you have secondary DNS service for your domain name, the domain name will be pointing to our name servers and your secondary DNS provider’s name servers.
Other possibilities
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If you are using your own subdomain sub.yourdomain.com, you need to point the name servers of the subdomain or the primary domain name to us as well.
Many DNS service providers do not allow setting up name server records for subdomains.
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If you are using our web redirect service, your domain name will be resolved to our web redirect server IP address.
The web redirect server will then redirect visitors to your website to the URL or port of your choice.
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If you are using one of our free third level domain names, you do not need to make any name server changes.
If your router IP address has changed but the hostname is not pointing to the correct IP address,
you need to run an IP update client software to keep the hostname mapped to your current IP address.
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Your hostname is mapped to the correct IP address but you cannot ping the hostname.
This is very normal because not all routers respond to ping requests.
We have covered many of the cases why your hostname is not resolving correctly.
Feel free to leave a comment if you can think of any other situations!
What to do if your domain...