DNS Issue

[Ewan]

This guy I am helping seems to be having a DNS issue.
If he uses the domain name, he cannot connect to the site, i.e. his computer cannot resolve the domain name from the IP. This is the case in internet explorer, other browsers and also when he tries to ping a domain name in cmd. If he types in the IP of a site, he can connect to it fine.

I asked him to search for a hosts file and it was clean.

Any ideas?

[Death Cycle]

A recap of the situation:

I have a linux box and a windows box connected to a Netgear RT314 Gateway Router. This router in turn is connected to a Westell VersaLink Model 327W DSL modem. For the past 6 months or so everything has been clean and worked just fine. Both computers had full access to the internet, DNS, etc, with this setup.

I leave one morning for college with it working perfectly fine. I even got online halfway through the day and saw that the computer was just connected. So apparently a problem happened about a hour before I got home.

Now since this affected both the linux box and the windows box at the same time I realized that it couldn't exactly be the computers... the idea that both, of two different OS's, failing the exact problem at the same time would be very unlikely. Either it had to be the ISP's DNS servers, the dsl modem, or the router. Guess what I didn't think to check?

Wasn't until this morning that I tried removing the router out of the setup and connecting straight to the DSL modem. All of a sudden everything started working perfectly fine. My problem with DNS issues has seemed to been resolved, however, what cause/explaination is it for the router just suddenly.. failing?

I always hate how one day things work perfectly fine, then the next they don't for no apparent reason at all. I'll probably try reloading the firmware onto the router and resetting everything to a default setting sometime... but for now, the computer is working well enough.

Thanks for your help.

~Death Cycle