Are *absolutely sure* that the name service for www.netbsd.org,
ftp.netbsd.org and sup.netbsd.org are done right?

I am writing a program to recurively download web pages.  Right in the
middle of running, name resolution stops working.  On three different
machines in three different domains:

falcon.dol-esa.gov

cais3.cais.com

leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov

If I run a script in the background that calls "nslookup
www.netbsd.org" ever three minutes the name never goes away.
Otherwise gethostbyname() spontaniously fails.

It's not just my code.  Telnet, ftp, rlogin, lynx all get the same
error.

It seems that for your configuration to be correct one of following
must be true (1) the whole world is configured wrong except for UCB,
MIT etc (and this could be masked if you keep referencing the name to
keep it alive in those domains), (2) functionality takes a backseat to
OS perfection.

As a test create a name in the same way that the other ones
(www.netbsd.org, ftp.netbsd.org and sup.netbsd.org) have been done
(i.e. alias mypc.someplace.remote to foo.netbsd.org) don't let anyone
reference it for a while and see if you can resolve it via
gethostbyname() inside of MIT, etc.

~Ken