sure but which one are they most likely to be using for their resolver (in firewalled environments it may be none of those)?
the caching server provided by the dialup global isp.
Be fair to the guy - the caching server (not authoritative server) is normally net.near the dialup client. It may be (mentioning no global ISPs we know) that the call is hauled halfway across the US / World to get to the one large datacenter containing both the caching DNS server and the connectivity to between that provider and the internet, but even so, serving pages from a machine close to the data center is in that case better than serving pages from a machine close to the user (unless you like tromboning data). But yes, this technique sucks for regional content. And yes, ICMP is not a good measure of connectivity. -- Alex Bligh VP Core Network, Concentric Network Corporation (formerly GX Networks, Xara Networks)