Nepal DNS Propagation Checker
Run a DNS lookup against 3 resolvers located in Nepal — Kathmandu · Kathmandu · Kathmandu.
- Resolved
- No answer
- Checking
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Kathmandu Nepal —
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Kathmandu Nepal —
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Kathmandu Nepal —
What checking DNS from Nepal tells you
A DNS resolver keeps a cached copy of each record for as long as its time-to-live allows, and does so separately in every location. A change you have published can be live on one resolver while another still serves the old answer.
Checking from Nepal looks up the record on servers inside the country, so you see what people there actually get rather than what a resolver on another continent returns.
This matters most right after you edit a record: an update visible on a global resolver like 8.8.8.8 can still be stale at a local ISP in Nepal until its cached copy expires. The check confirms the new value has reached the resolvers your Nepal visitors depend on.
Nepal is landlocked with no submarine cable of its own, so nearly all of its international traffic crosses the southern border into India — Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications carry most of it. A fiber link over Rasuwagadhi to China Telecom, lit in 2018, broke that dependence on paper but still moves a small share. That geography is why the resolver a Nepali household uses is the one its ISP hands out: Nepal Telecom on older ADSL and mobile lines, WorldLink or Vianet on the fiber that now dominates Kathmandu.
Checking a record from inside Nepal shows what those ISP resolvers return, not what a global resolver like 8.8.8.8 says from abroad. It also surfaces the state's filtering: since 2018 ISPs have been ordered to block pornographic sites at the DNS level, and TikTok was cut off the same way from November 2023 until August 2024. For a domain nobody blocks, an in-country check mostly confirms local caching and routing. For one that is blocked, you see the block itself.
- Nepal Telecom (NTC)202.70.64.5 State incumbent; default on ADSL and mobile lines
- WorldLink Communications202.79.32.4 Largest private ISP; default resolver on its FTTH
- Vianet Communications Major Kathmandu fiber ISP; hands out its own resolver
DNS answers from Nepali resolvers reflect state-ordered blocking — pornographic domains since 2018 and, for a period, TikTok — so a blocked site may return no answer or a redirect from an in-country resolver.
How DNS propagation works
Every DNS record carries a time-to-live: the seconds a resolver may keep its cached answer before asking again. Change a record and resolvers holding the old value keep serving it until that timer runs out.
Propagation is this expiry playing out across many independent resolvers, so a lower time-to-live set ahead of a change makes it take effect sooner. There is no fixed waiting period — each record's time-to-live decides how long the old answer lingers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do DNS servers in Nepal return different results than 8.8.8.8?
Two things cause it. Each resolver caches independently, so one can hold an older answer than another.
And content delivery networks reply based on where the asking resolver is, steering a resolver in Nepal toward a nearby edge node.
Both answers can be correct at the same time for their own location.
How long until a DNS change is visible in Nepal?
It depends on the record's time-to-live, not on the country.
Resolvers in Nepal keep the previous answer until their cached copy expires, then pick up the new one.
If you lowered the time-to-live before making the change, it appears sooner; otherwise the old value can persist until the original timer elapses.
Which DNS server should users in Nepal use?
For most people the resolver their internet provider assigns is fine and usually the lowest latency.
Anyone who wants an alternative can point to a public resolver reachable from Nepal, such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8); the right choice depends on whether you value speed, privacy, or filtering.
Why check DNS from Nepal specifically?
Because it shows what visitors in Nepal actually resolve, which can differ from a global lookup.
If your audience is in Nepal, or you have moved hosting or mail there, checking against in-country resolvers confirms the records have reached the servers those users rely on.
Do Nepali ISPs block websites through DNS?
Yes. Since 2018 the Nepal Telecommunications Authority has ordered ISPs to block pornographic domains at the resolver, a list that has grown past 20,000 sites, and TikTok was blocked the same way from November 2023 to August 2024. Blocks are applied per-ISP, so a domain can resolve on one provider and fail on another, and a VPN or a foreign resolver like 1.1.1.1 bypasses them.
Why does a domain resolve differently from inside Nepal?
Two reasons. Nepal's ISPs each run their own caching resolvers, so TTLs and propagation can lag what you see abroad. And most international traffic hairpins through India (Airtel and Tata) before reaching global anycast nodes. npIX, the national internet exchange, keeps Nepal-hosted lookups local, which is why domains on Nepali hosting often answer faster from a Kathmandu resolver than from 8.8.8.8.