www address will not resolve - non www does

mprough:

but rather that they overstep their boundaries with caching things in order to produce seemingly faster speeds
Yes, and not favorably to dynamic sites at all!!

mprough:

DNS "and such" ..... ATT is terrible about this. I once had to speak with a net tech to see a favicon after 3 weeks. They flushed, I rebooted and bingo there it was. Most troubling is how they cache requests...

In the interests of accuracy, DNS "and such" must be treated and considered as entirely different entitites. What is applicable to "and such" rarely ever applies to DNS.

The moment you think 'cache' and 'DNS' you've gone off on the wrong track.

mprough:

which is why he cannot get it resolving for him

No, No, No, and a thousand times no. A 'resolving' issue is a DNS issue. Nothing else, and certainly nothing to do with any form of 'cache' on the ISP's server.

If the DNS is incorrectly set they could do a 1000 'flushes' and not be any closer to fixing a problem. This is why I said **In the interests of accuracy.
**He got it resolving not because his host did a reboot, a flush, or any one of a 1000 other irrelevant actions. It started resolving for no other reason than his host added the missing 'www' record in the DNS.

It really doesn't get any simpler than this. There is no need to even think it is/was a 'cache' issue, and the idea of doing a reboot to fix a service issue makes me shudder, as it should you (if it doesn't, you are in no position to argue the point). No offence intended (unless you administer your own servers, in which case, I'm glad I'm not one of your clients) .

Cheers
Rod

RodG:

In the interests of accuracy, DNS "and such" must be treated and considered as entirely different entitites. What is applicable to "and such" rarely ever applies to DNS.

The moment you think 'cache' and 'DNS' you've gone off on the wrong track.

No, No, No, and a thousand times no. A 'resolving' issue is a DNS issue. Nothing else, and certainly nothing to do with any form of 'cache' on the ISP's server.

If the DNS is incorrectly set they could do a 1000 'flushes' and not be any closer to fixing a problem. This is why I said **In the interests of accuracy.
**He got it resolving not because his host did a reboot, a flush, or any one of a 1000 other irrelevant actions. It started resolving for no other reason than his host added the missing 'www' record in the DNS.

It really doesn't get any simpler than this. There is no need to even think it is/was a 'cache' issue, and the idea of doing a reboot to fix a service issue makes me shudder, as it should you (if it doesn't, you are in no position to argue the point). No offence intended (unless you administer your own servers, in which case, I'm glad I'm not one of your clients) .

Cheers
Rod

Unfortunately there are a large number of ISPs that seem to ignore TTLs all together in their DNS caching schemes. Ask ATT... while I am not a net tech, my son is =)

The part of DNS which does nameserver lookups relies on a database being updated, usually on standard TTL cycles. That database is stored locally on the server for speed of lookups. Just like a cache.

And it's very possible that some hosts disable those refresh cycles, or misconfigure the server by breaking or even temporarily disabling the update process, etc, thus leaving the database outdated, so nameserver lookups thus make reference to outdated data.

And in that respect it behaves in the very same way that a "cache" behaves. There's no reason to consider it to be any different than any other caching system. It may not be a "page content" or "site content" cache. But it's an outdated copy of data which needs updating from time to time to be kept current, just like any cache.

So, RodG, I respectfully disagree with your insistence on separating the two.

And really, any further differentiation between them is getting way off topic.
The original poster's problem is adequately explained, and it's been confirmed that the problem needed to be resolved by the hosting company.
It was not a Zen Cart issue, nor a "user error". The problem was with the hosting service.
Full stop.

mprough:

Unfortunately there are a large number of ISPs that seem to ignore TTLs all together

Old, but still valid:
http://www.tummy.com/blogs/2007/08/14/dns-ttl-caching/

Cheers
Rod

ps. ATT do not ignore the TTL's. (I've just tested)