Host command timing out sporadically

[Barry Margolin]

In article <mailman.655.1335991345.63724.bind-users at lists.isc.org>,
 Lyle Giese <lyle at lcrcomputer.net> wrote:

> On 05/02/12 12:12, Paul Marais wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I'm having an issue where my postfix server is having trouble with some 
> > lookups.
> > When I type 'host<hostname>', 80% of the time I get decent reply speed, but 
> > for 20% I get a 5 second delay, or even a timeout.
> >
> > My nameserver is configured to only allow recursion for hosts on my local 
> > network, and I have my ISP dns in my forwarders.
> > My resolv.conf has 127.0.0.1, my internal ip, and the ip for my isp DNS
> >
> > Any help will be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Paul
> >
> >
> Don't use host.  It's not telling us what is going wrong and it's only 
> doing an A record lookup of host name.

I thought host does an A, AAAA, and MX lookup of host names by default; 
when given an IP, it converts it to the corresponding IN-ADDR.ARPA name 
and does a PTR lookup.  Does it also have a similar heuristic for IPv6 
addresses?

-- 
Barry Margolin
Arlington, MA