Strange (dns ?) behavior

[stan]

I have a machine that is exhibitig most strnage behavior, as shown here:

amanda at amanda:~$ ping pm2fw
PING pm2fw.mcn.chs (10.209.137.24) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from pm2fw.mcn.chs (10.209.137.24): icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=1.12 ms
64 bytes from pm2fw.mcn.chs.mcn.chs (10.209.137.24): icmp_seq=2 ttl=62
time=0.663 ms
64 bytes from pm2fw.mcn.chs (10.209.137.24): icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=0.471
ms
64 bytes from pm2fw.mcn.chs.mcn.chs (10.209.137.24): icmp_seq=4 ttl=62
time=0.973 ms

I discoverd this when a package that tunels over ssh did not work till I
tried it using the IP address, rather than the name.

Any thoughts as to what might be causng this?

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