My solution to "can't find the server at www.google.com."

Recently I had a problem on my home computers. We couldn't connect to www.google.com anymore. A ping didn't work, a nslookup didn't work, a tracert didn't work. All other sites were ok.

I searched the Internet (using google.be ;-)) and many people had the same problem. It seems to be a strange DNS problem.

For those people, here is a temporary solution. Edit your Windows Hosts file (in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc) and add this line at the end:

216.239.59.147 www.google.com

This way you tell your computer directly where to find Google.com. Note this solution will no longer work if Google.com changes its IP Address.

After that I could again read my gmail, my Google Calendar, my Google Notebook and Blogger.

Strange problem...

I would like to know the real issue behind it.