How to make DNS Propagation faster

[Stella]

I am aware that the usual time required for DNS propagation is 24-72 hours. But isn't there a known method of propagating it faster?

Coz one of my clients have a busy site and while I changed my host the new name servers had to be updated, he tended to loose the updated that had happened during the propagation. Now Im praying that he doesn't head to my competitors for seeking services.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

[phoenix65]

You must set the DNS records to have a low TTL ie. Time To Live value before you head towards replacing them. It notifies other DNS servers about intervals between two checks for any changes and updates.
Usually the average TTL for any site is set to 4 hrs. I believe that, the reason for the delay is due to the fact that few DNS server administrators instruct their own DNS servers about ignoring the TTLs and to cache addresses for a time that the server admin specifies. Though the prime reason for doing this is to reduce the load over the DNS server.
Though out of experience, now-a-days we find that most of the DNS updates have been resolving in much lesser intervals as compared to previously.