Does publishing to IPNS always take so long to finally propagate?

I was following a tutorial on how to create a simple website and make it accessible through IPFS (had to remove the link to meet new user 2-link limit), and everything eventually worked. I actually set up two of them, one on my Linux box, and the other on Windows.

But the new IPNS address for the websites each took about an hour to show up at the URL http://ipfs.io/ipns/(Peer ID), though they were showing on my localhost URL very quickly. Until they finally worked at ipfs.io, the website kept telling me it had failed to resolve the ipns/(Peer ID).

I assume this is because the new IPNS data has to propagate throughout the whole network to be available at another IPFS portal like ipfs. io. I did an update to some of the files on one site, re-added the files, and republished (same peer id), and again it took an hour before my new site would show up at another IPFS portal besides the one on my other computer.

So I was just wondering, is this long wait just par for the course? I’ve updated DNS records and had them work the new way within minutes; is IPFS so much slower because of its decentralized nature, or maybe just because of low adoption (currently) among users? EDIT: Made another change, and timed this one, it only took 15 minutes to show up at ipfs dot io.

I’ve also tried the IPNS route for hosting, but gave it up. It’s slow and you have to republish the data after 24 hours ( this might have changed but it’s how I remember it. ).

Now I try using DAT to host my sites ( but even less adoption than IPFS ) and IPFS to reference resources ( css, js files ). I feel a blend of the two protocols is the way to go.

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