thanks for the info!
here's the url to that looking glass site:
http://www.traceroute.org/
the interesting thing is that when I look up the domain on that site, it shows it resolving to the new server. yet my tradescript (on the old server) is showing no noticeable loss of traffic, indicating that most or all of the visitors are still seeing the old server. normally this wouldn't be a concern since I would just mirror the old server to the new one, but this site was on a virtual account that I can't transfer through cpanel so I need to reinstall a script (hopefully quickly) after the nameserver resolves.