Has my transfer gone through?
A transfer is not through when it has been started but when the old state is nowhere to be found. In between lie hours in which both apply at once.
What does that mean?
A domain transfer consists of several steps that rarely take effect at the same moment: the nameservers get switched, the mailboxes move, the website gets copied. Each step on its own looks finished afterwards. Together they only add up to a completed transfer once no record anywhere points at the old provider.
Then there is the lifetime of each record, the TTL. It says how long other servers may hold on to an answer before asking again. Before a transfer you set it low, so the switch reaches everyone quickly. Afterwards it belongs back up.
This tool looks at each set of records and asks whether it points at one provider
without a gap: the nameservers, the mail servers, the addresses of the website. Added
to that is the SOA record, which says which server counts as the source
of the zone, and the lifetime.
What you will not see here
This answer comes from a single resolver, at this moment. What sits in other providers' caches is something nobody sees from the outside. There the old state can still apply until the lifetime runs out, so with a TTL of one day, for a day.
What can go wrong?
- Two nameservers at the old provider, two at the new one. Then sometimes one state answers and sometimes the other, and the website is reachable seemingly at random.
- The
MXrecord has been switched, the mailboxes have not. Mail then lands in empty mailboxes at the new provider, and nobody misses it until somebody notices. - The website has moved, the old contract runs on. While it runs, a forgotten record goes unnoticed. On the day of cancellation it gets noticed.
- The lifetime stays at a few minutes after the transfer. That costs an extra lookup on every request.
How do you fix it?
In the order things take effect. First bring all content and mailboxes over to the new provider and check there that they are complete. Then switch the records. Only after that cancel the old contract, and at the earliest once nothing has arrived at the old provider for a few days.
The nameservers themselves do not get changed at the host but wherever the domain is registered. Which provider holds the DNS today is answered by the question about DNS management.
Questions that usually come up together:
