Tunisia DNS Propagation Checker
Run a DNS lookup against 4 resolvers located in Tunisia — Tunis · Tunis · Tunis · Tunis.
- Resolved
- No answer
- Checking
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Tunis
Tunisia
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Tunis
Tunisia
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Tunis
Tunisia
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Tunis
Tunisia
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What checking DNS from Tunisia 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 Tunisia 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 Tunisia until its cached copy expires. The check confirms the new value has reached the resolvers your Tunisia visitors depend on.
Under Ben Ali, Tunisians called the state censorship machine "Ammar404" — the SmartFilter system run by the Agence Tunisienne d'Internet (ATI), which served fake 404 pages in place of blocked sites. The 2011 revolution dismantled it, and in February 2012 the Court of Cassation threw out an order to reinstate porn filtering; an ICT minister issued a public "death certificate" for Ammar404 that September.
ATI still runs the national backbone (AS2609) and the country's main IXP, and since 2013 has hosted an L-Root instance in Tunis — the first in the Maghreb. Most Tunisians resolve through whatever their provider hands out: Tunisie Telecom, Orange Tunisie, or Topnet; ATI itself also runs recursive resolvers inside its own backbone range.
Checking DNS from inside Tunisia shows the record as those ISP resolvers actually return it. When blocking does happen now it tends to sit at the TCP/IP layer — OONI traced the 2022 Zoom outage there, not to poisoned DNS — so a lookup here usually reads clean.
- Tunisie Telecom102.28.250.74 Incumbent state operator; default resolver for most households
- ATI (Agence Tunisienne d'Internet)196.203.86.4 National backbone (AS2609); recursive resolver in its range
- Orange Tunisie193.95.111.96 Mobile and fixed operator; default for its subscribers
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 Tunisia 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 Tunisia 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 Tunisia?
It depends on the record's time-to-live, not on the country.
Resolvers in Tunisia 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 Tunisia 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 Tunisia, 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 Tunisia specifically?
Because it shows what visitors in Tunisia actually resolve, which can differ from a global lookup.
If your audience is in Tunisia, or you have moved hosting or mail there, checking against in-country resolvers confirms the records have reached the servers those users rely on.
Is DNS filtered or censored in Tunisia?
Under Ben Ali, ATI ran a SmartFilter deployment nicknamed "Ammar404" that blocked thousands of sites and returned fake 404 errors. It was dismantled after the 2011 revolution, and in 2012 the Court of Cassation rejected an attempt to reinstate porn filtering. There is no broad DNS-level blocking today; when the government disrupted Zoom in 2022, OONI found the blocking happened at the TCP/IP level, not through poisoned DNS.
Which resolvers do people in Tunisia actually use?
Most rely on their ISP's default: Tunisie Telecom, Orange Tunisie, or Topnet. ATI operates the national backbone (AS2609) and runs recursive resolvers such as 196.203.86.4 in its own address space, and it runs Tunisia's main internet exchange. ATI has also hosted an L-Root nameserver instance in Tunis since 2013 — the first in the Maghreb — so root DNS lookups can be answered locally.
