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Flushing your local computer’s DNS cache

Your home computer creates a cache for all DNS settings. It does this to save time each time you visit a website. The issue is if you change your IP from moving hosts or to a dedicated IP for example, than your computer will get stuck on the old IP. The best way to speed up the process is to use these options.

For Mac:

sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

For Windows 7:

  1. Click the start button and navigate to the command prompt (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt)
  2. Now just type in the command ipconfig /flushdns

For Windows 8:

  1. Type cmd and the Windows search bar will appear on the right hand side.
  2. Now just type in the command ipconfig /flushdns

Keep in mind this does not always work. For example some ISP’s take days from their system to see a new IP and you just have to wait. I just had an issue with Charter taking 24 hours to see a DNS change.

Other tricks:

Try to check a website with and without the www. in front.
Try another browser
Reboot your computer
Turn off your computer, unplug it a couple minutes, then turn it back on.

In most cases the update is working everywhere within 30 minutes but there is those strange cases where it can take 48 hours.