It seems like a number of Microsoft related web sites have vanished.
I noticed name server problems earlier this evening. Is this spreading?
windowsupdate.microsoft.com was also really sporadic for a while earlier, but I was able to eventually get an answer. As you suggested, connections to the hosts are going through fine once you get an answer. dns4.cp.msft.net. through dns7.cp.msft.net (the auth servers) are pinging fine but DNS queries sent to those hosts timeout. The address block does appear to belong to Microsoft so... maybe they misconfigured their firewall or sumtin. Also noticed extremely high levels of packet loss to them earlier but that appears to be straightened out. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/