CentOS - Dec 2014 - no access to certain WEB sites using CentOS 6.5

HW:
Lenovo T520 laptop with MS WIN 7
        OR
dedicated PC (DELL GX 280)

SW:
CentOS 6.5 (64-bit)  installed using VMware Player on MS WIN 7 host
CASE A)  -- BRIDGED networking selected
CASE B)  -- NAT networking
              OR
CentOS 6.5 i(32-bit) nstalled on real HW (DELL OptiPlex GX 280)

___issue____  at hand:

The default Firefox ESR browser (17.0.10) does not find many web pages.
regardless of the system (virtual - bridged or NAT  OR real HW)

For example:
https://www.google.com/  works
When I enter into search field string 'opera browser'
https://www.google.com/search?q=opera+browser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a

I do get a lot of results back. So far so good.

Then I click on the first searched  link http://www.opera.com/
I get back

Server not found
          Firefox can't find the server at www.opera.com

Then I open gnome-terminal and  type
ping www.opera.com

I get back  __nothing__

[igor at localhost ~]$ ping www.opera.com
PING www.route53.opera.com (54.244.236.138) 56(84) bytes of data.

but

when I type

ping opera.com

I get back

[igor at localhost ~]$ ping opera.com
PING opera.com (185.26.182.79) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from front-ams.opera.com (185.26.182.79): icmp_seq=1 ttl=41 time=174 ms
64 bytes from front-ams.opera.com (185.26.182.79): icmp_seq=2 ttl=41 time=122 ms

=======================another example
=======================http://www.delo.si/      works
http://www.dnevnik.si  does __not__ work

http://www.centos.org/ works
but when I click on the  link  Special Interest Group on the same page
http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup , the link does NOT work.
I get back

Server not found
          Firefox can't find the server at www.opera.com.

:::important:::
All the examples from above work flawlessly on the MS WIN 7 on the
same laptop, the same ETHERNET cable connected to the same switch hub
with the same router at the same time.
[Reminder: CentOS 6.5 runs on VMWare on WIN 7]


Any hint, FAQ, pointer to RTFM is more than welcome

I am  puzzled, please  help






-- 
"You can't run an economy where the financial sector is making 40
percent of the profits."


        former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker 2009

On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 03:30:07AM -0500, Igor Furlan
wrote:
> The default Firefox ESR browser (17.0.10) does not find many web pages.
> regardless of the system (virtual - bridged or NAT  OR real HW)
You aren't running with anything near the latest Firefox packages.
The version of Firefox ESR that is provided is version 31.3.0.
Before even trying to debug these things, you should try updating to
the recent version.  There are many security holes in the version you
are running, as well.  I have to wonder what other packages are out of
date, such as openssl.

Your pings against www.opera.com and opera.com aren't unusual.  Not
all hosts respond to pings.  I can confirm that behavior on my
systems.

I suggest keeping your system up to date before trying to track down
whatever problems you're having.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 6:28 AM, Jonathan Billings <billings at
negate.org> wrote:
> I suggest keeping your system up to date before trying to track down
> whatever problems you're having.
I was able to remove firefox from the equation and reproduce the
problem using curl

NON working URL

[igor at localhost ~]$ ping www.iquaid.org
PING www.iquaid.org (208.97.177.112) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from apache2-ogle.welchs.dreamhost.com (208.97.177.112):
icmp_seq=1 ttl=40 time=44.4 ms
64 bytes from apache2-ogle.welchs.dreamhost.com (208.97.177.112):
icmp_seq=2 ttl=40 time=44.9 ms
64 bytes from apache2-ogle.welchs.dreamhost.com (208.97.177.112):
icmp_seq=3 ttl=40 time=44.9 ms
^C
--- www.iquaid.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2835ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 44.475/44.791/44.976/0.332 ms

[igor at localhost ~]$ curl -I www.iquaid.org
curl: (6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.iquaid.org'

working URL

[igor at localhost ~]$ ping www.google.com
PING www.google.com (74.125.137.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from yh-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.137.99): icmp_seq=1 ttl=40
time=24.0 ms
64 bytes from yh-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.137.99): icmp_seq=2 ttl=40
time=24.4 ms
64 bytes from yh-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.137.99): icmp_seq=3 ttl=40
time=24.1 ms
C64 bytes from yh-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.137.99): icmp_seq=4 ttl=40
time=24.8 ms
^C
--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2283ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.797/23.977/24.169/0.234 ms

[igor at localhost ~]$ curl -I www.google.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 18:28:27 GMT
Expires: -1
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Set-Cookie:
PREF=ID=1bbec9638e094178:FF=0:TM=1419100107:LM=1419100107:S=gM_va5X8lh-0JQCB;
expires=Mon, 19-Dec-2016 18:28:27 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Set-Cookie:
NID=67=OCZyJIsZHlH417BzoIBG9H6qeb4G01ilsm_kzaIRa8rwQzd7w208O7j2cIvzchxEOSN9akek3qkO81kuVlnKzkXhzg85S
eahbfbOkZUCZ8zB-iup8TOzG2dEkWIIjwi_;
expires=Sun, 21-Jun-2015 18:28:27 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly
P3P: CP="This is not a P3P policy! See
http://www.google.com/support/accoun...&answer=151657 for more info."
Server: gws
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Alternate-Protocol: 80:quic,p=0.02
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

nslookup and traceroute output

[igor at localhost ~]$ nslookup www.google.com
Server: 192.168.1.254
Address: 192.168.1.254#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.google.com
Address: 173.194.37.49
Name: www.google.com
Address: 173.194.37.52
Name: www.google.com
Address: 173.194.37.50
Name: www.google.com
Address: 173.194.37.51
Name: www.google.com
Address: 173.194.37.48

[igor at localhost ~]$ nslookup www.iquaid.org
Server: 192.168.1.254
Address: 192.168.1.254#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.iquaid.org
Address: 208.97.177.112

[igor at localhost ~]$ traceroute www.google.com
traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.196.106), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 0.290 ms 0.311 ms 0.387 ms
2 adsl-98-70-114-1.tys.bellsouth.net (98.70.114.1) 7.702 ms 10.346 ms 12.766 ms
3 70.159.238.70 (70.159.238.70) 26.058 ms 28.418 ms 30.813 ms
4 70.159.238.69 (70.159.238.69) 31.993 ms 34.428 ms 37.330 ms
5 70.159.238.73 (70.159.238.73) 40.007 ms 42.435 ms 44.889 ms
6 70.159.238.85 (70.159.238.85) 46.044 ms 16.465 ms 18.511 ms
7 12.81.60.58 (12.81.60.58) 19.950 ms 14.904 ms 17.235 ms
8 12.81.60.70 (12.81.60.70) 22.624 ms 23.585 ms 27.477 ms
<snip> <snip> <snip>
20 209.85.243.254 (209.85.243.254) 44.328 ms 23.293 ms
209.85.248.31(209.85.248.31) 23.022 ms
21 * * *
22 yk-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.196.106) 32.666 ms 34.817 ms 37.496 ms

[igor at localhost ~]$ traceroute www.iquaid.org
www.iquaid.org: No address associated with hostname
Cannot handle "host" cmdline arg `www.iquaid.org' on position 1
(argc 1)


-- 
"You can't run an economy where the financial sector is making 40
percent of the profits."


        former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker 2009