Interesting Belkin router problem I came across (after 2 years, my first, I'm curious)

Ok, so here we go - a solution apart from support would be nice, also because I'm curios, but its not urgent.

Not urgent as I had a spare Thomson router doing the Belkin's job now - only because we moved house and had to apply for a new contract, one, that this time came with a router.

Now to my problem:

It has happened before - but what is going on.

The internet is working fine, and all of a sudden, in the evening/late evening the internet connection stops working - well, not quite.
ICQ and Skype still work, but MSN, Opera, IE don't.

MSN diagnostics tell me its a DNS problem.

Rebooting the router doesn't help at all - no change.
Neither does changing the DNS server.

Spending time on the phone with tiscali support led to the following:
Google can not be opened with it's domain
Google can be opened using it's IP adress

i.e. the problem lies with the conversion - domain to IP and vice versa - it is however, not a tiscali problem.

a) because it works fine on their side, and
b) because a second router works fine
(the Thomson one, now acting as a replacement)

Normally you'd say it's a straightforeward broken router - well, it isn't.

The strangest thing is, that on the same settings, the next day, mroning and midday the router will again work fine.

Also: This has happened before - and then vanished...

If anybody can actuall tell me in networking-layman's terms (I may know my way around the Windows OS, I don't around networks) what is going on, I'd be quite happy.

The router does come with a lifetime warranty - but I would have to find the receit first for that...

Anyway:
Before someone says, its a Belkin problem - it is the very first time I've had a serious problem with the router, otherwise it has done a very good job and been very reliable!

Thanks for reading and any suggeestions.

 

When you say changing the DNS servers doesn't help, do you mean changing the servers from within the router's config page, or changing the DNS servers in your NIC adapter's config?

Since you could access Google using the actual IP address, but not using the human-readable domain name, then yes, the MS diagnostics were correct inasmuch as it was a DNS error; of course, that's sort of like answering the question "where am I" with the answer "right here" - perfectly true, and perfectly useless.

 

Ok:
With changing the domain name Server I meant chaingin the primary and secondary DNS server via the Router's configuration page.

(Normally its set to "automatic from ISP")