bind-utils host timed out on select website

[pbroyce]

Issue with the 'host' command that comes with bind-utils package.

We don't have any browsing/name resolution issues except to the following two sites:
http://www.aeroplan.com
http://www.airtransat.ca

command "host www.aeroplan.com" returned:

www.aeroplan.com is an alias for www.halb.aeroplan.com.
www.halb.aeroplan.com has address 207.34.195.17
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Same goest to "host www.airtransat.ca".

which perhaps explain why the browsing to these sites failed because A record query somehow did not complete successfully. This, however, seems to be the case when I use "host".

When I do "dig www.aeroplan.com A", all is good:

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_4.2 <<>> www.aeroplan.com A
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51570
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.aeroplan.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.aeroplan.com. 32 IN CNAME www.halb.aeroplan.com.
www.halb.aeroplan.com. 20 IN A 207.34.195.17

;; Query time: 44 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.32.12#53(192.168.32.12)
;; WHEN: Wed Mar 24 17:29:09 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 73


I have tried to run the "host" command against different DNS caching servers I have access to all produced the same timed out error.

I called Aeroplan technical support to report the issue to them and from their perspective, they have no problem accessing the website.

And we don't have any problem accessing any websites ourselves if "host" return A record lookup without the timed out error.

Facts established so far:
1. It's not our firewall filtering out packet. I tried it on external facing server without firewall and got the same result.

2. It's not our DNS caching server cause same errors are observed on our ISP caching server.

3. It works on an altogether network, from a Windows Vista desktop, through IE 8.

Any insight will be appreciated.

[pbroyce]

It dawned on me to give different version of bind-utils a check to see if the problem I reported earlier is consistent across multiple versions of bind-utils.

bind-utils with timed out issue:
bind-utils-9.6.2-1.fc12.x86_64 (latest on Fedora 12)
bind-utils-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_4.2 (latest on CentOS 5.4)

bind-utils with NO problem:
bind-utils-9.2.4-24.EL4 (RHEL 4.4)


Any help will be appreciated.

Is this the right forum to submit this question, if not please enlighten me as to where I should go as I don't see an official BIND forum...