Whois shows my new webhost's DNS that I entered into the Netsol online control panel a few days ago, but my domain name still goes to my former host's server. If the DNS has propagated to any part of the internet, can I verify that, even before it reaches where I am? How would I go about this? Can the previous host block or retard propagation (I'd put nothing past that guy)? If I saw evidence that propagation is actually taking place, I could relax better. Is DNS propagation slower during the weekend??

I found some good information answering my own question, by searching on google: http://www.vshosting.net/support/dns.html Checking your DNS update status (outside of your ISP): In the event you're becoming impatient, and or are wondering if the rest of the world outside of your ISP can access your new site, you can proxy yourself to another network and test it there. In many cases, you'll be surprised to see your site responding perfectly, yet when you attempt it directly from your ISP's servers, it does not exist. There are several services, which allow anonymous surfing across the net. While this is not the intent here, they can be used for trouble shooting domain resolution problems. How? Because they proxy you through their network, which means your URL requests are controlled by "their" DNS cache records. These services update/expire their DNS cache far more often than ISP's, which makes them well suited for testing your domain name through a network, which operates with the latest DNS updates across the web. To run this check, you can try accessing your site through one of these two services: http://anonymizer.com/ https://safeweb.com/ Both of them allow you to enter a URL, and proxy your request through their servers. If your site is accessible from these servers, then chances are, your ISP has yet to expire their old DNS cache records. You can also do a trace route for off site. Go to http://geektools.com/traceroute.php To a trace route of your domain and you can see the IP it goes to.

I just discovered that the "hosts" file in my windows-system32-etc directory had an entry directing my domain name to the previous server. I have no idea how that entry got into that file - I didn't put it there, and I never even knew that file existed till now. When I took out that entry, now I surf to my new server. A free utility called FastNet99 led me to uncover this.