smb@research.att.com (Steve Bellovin) writes:
>    fetchmail: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "machshav.com IN AAAA", got type "A"

When my cablemodem ISP (athome) died a few years back and I needed a
cheap fallback ASAP. I got a very cheap local dialup.  Big mistake.
One thing that wasn't even close to working was their sorry excuse of
a nameserver.  I just ran my own named (bind-9 preferably) and was
happy.

One other thing that never worked with them was that certain sites
just couldn't be contacted when I used my normal settings.  Pings to
them worked so it wasn't a routing problem, but normal TCP packets
just got dead air.  It felt a bit like they were using PPPOE as their
outgoing link and had read some idiotic "security on the internet"
book which recommenced filtering all ICMP's.  All in all, I'm very
glad to be rid of them.

So in a nutshell, I'd try 1) runnning your own named and 2) if you
have trouble getting to your destination lower the MTU at both ends of
the link (if you have access).

-wolfgang