I am a little surprised considering the knowledge of networks around this list there has been no response, anyway............. I decided to have a look at what was happening on the link through ppp0 to try and isolate the problem. This was done using tcpdump, the output of this showed what was comming out of the nameserver set up on the firewall machine bore no resembelance to the address being requested. I went no further than that. This machine uses pdnsd as a caching nameserver. I assume a problem within the namserver setup would explain why it worked on one destination and not on the other. The firewall machine is now 6 years and 8 months old, using debian 5.?. It has been updated although this was long ago. The above error was the "last straw", the machine has been doing a number of oddish things for a while now and I have decided to drag it into the present. Previous experience shows a machine this old that has not the operating system and related software updated can cause some really wierd problems. I would assume its not the oldest Debian box that has been run daily with out an update but it must be getting up there. The machine itself uses a Gigabyte 6BXD motherboard with a couple of 600 mhz P3's and would be around 12-14 years old, the year 1999 comes to mind as a date on the motherboard. Fans probaly need cleaning also............ Using Linux for over 20 years now. Lindsay