Mike Drew writes:
>    Could someone please ping msnews.microsoft.com  and tell me what
> their IP address is.  Our DNS resolution gets kind of goofy sometimes
> and one time it works, next time it says there is no DNS entry.

This type of "now you see it, now you don't" resolution problem can be a sign
that your DNS servers are using an outdated list of root servers.  The current
list of root servers can be found at:

        ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/named.root

I experienced this very same problem recently and installing the current
named.root fixed things.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)