Name Server?

[walterhb]

I am unable to access my website. When I inquired at the site provider, I received this message: "Yes, we are having some trouble but, it's not with the servers. We are having trouble with our name servers and have fixed the problem. I can access your site from my browser (my isp is bellsouth.net). It might take a liitle while longer for the changes to update to your ISP. Thank you for your patients. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have you.

Jay Yates
iPraise.com"

What does this mean? What is the process by which my ISP, Juno, is updated?

[HAL9000]

I do believe that they are talking about the Domain Name Server (DNS). It takes your request of http://www.wherever_it_is_you_want_to_go.com and directs it to the web server. These sometimes take time for the update to go into effect.

[mairving]

I'll put it in plain English. Hal can't do that. He's Canadian.

Each site on the web has it's own specific IP address. These addresses are registered by a handful of companies. The IP address might look something like this 208.56.56.1. Now it is hard to remember all of those numbers. It is much easier to type in and remember http://www.pcmech.com than the numeric address. That is where name servers come into play. They basically do the lookup for you and associate the name with the number. Without them you still function on the internet but only if you have the actually IP (numeric address).

Now a message like you received seems to indicate that they have changed the IP address for your web site and they are waiting for the name servers worldwide to propagate this. Generally that process takes about 24-48 hours.

[HAL9000]

LOL... I'll remember that cheap shot mairving