Damn! I spoke too soon last night. I *did* work then ... but this morning is it back to the problem. I have repeated the tests below using my ISP DNS servers 212.159.6.10 & 9 and NSQget, and get the same results. On 20 May, in article <534f005452freelists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Martin <freelists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > In my !NSQ.Settings file (dated 25 Oct 2011 and I think unchanged) there > are 3 DNSBL entries. I tried each of them from Win7 using NSlookup, and > from RO using NSGget, prefixed by 2.2.10.154. (which is on the SpamHaus > BL), and the results were... > zen.spamhaus.org 127.0.0.2 > bl.spamcop.net not found > db.wpbl.info not found > This was with both the OpenDNS ones, and my normal DSN servers. During the stall NSQcache shows: ---- host: 108.9.159.212 - block list lookup - address: 212.159.9.108 time: 10:00:32 21-May-2013 state: Waiting for answer So, my question still is: what exact DNS request is AS doing that is stalling? Investigations are continuing... Martin -- Martin Avison using a British Iyonix running RISC OS 5 and the Pluto mail and newsreader