On Sun, 30 May 1999, der Mouse wrote:

> > No, I can't ping the host because ping, like telnet and ftp, simply
> > hangs when I try to run it.
> 
> How long did you wait?  If nameservice isn't working for any reason, it
> will hang for a human-nontrivial time trying to do name lookup.  Many
> programs have an option (-n in the case of ping) to suppress this
> lookup....  (The "human-nontrivial time" is perhaps a minute or two.)

AFAIR the spec says 45 seconds per nameserver.

- ad