72.14.207.104

In the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.security, in article
<dblr7v$8of$1@domitilla.aioe.org>, bfisher wrote:

>I too was having the exact same trouble.... pinging google.com from
>the pc would reply with a 216.239.39.99 address but the browser would
>time out when trying to find google.ca or google.com.
> After many a sleepless night I found on my LEAF router (which runs
>shorewall firewall) that it has a norfc1918 filtering option in it...
>but default it would block all traffic from the IP address range of
>72.0.0.0 /5 as this was a reserved range.

That list of reserved ranges is old.

[compton ~]$ zgrep '^07[2-9]' rfcs/ipv4-address-space.06.30.05.gz
072/8 Aug 04 ARIN (whois.arin.net)
073/8 Mar 05 ARIN (whois.arin.net)
074/8 Jun 05 ARIN (whois.arin.net)
075/8 Jun 05 ARIN (whois.arin.net)
076/8 Jun 05 ARIN (whois.arin.net)
077/8 Sep 81 IANA - Reserved
078/8 Sep 81 IANA - Reserved
079/8 Sep 81 IANA - Reserved
[compton ~]$ zgrep Reserved rfcs/ipv4-address-space.06.30.05.gz | cut -d' '
-f1 | column
000/8 037/8 095/8 104/8 113/8 122/8 180/8 223/8 248/8
001/8 039/8 096/8 105/8 114/8 123/8 181/8 240/8 249/8
002/8 042/8 097/8 106/8 115/8 173/8 182/8 241/8 250/8
005/8 077/8 098/8 107/8 116/8 174/8 183/8 242/8 251/8
007/8 078/8 099/8 108/8 117/8 175/8 184/8 243/8 252/8
023/8 079/8 100/8 109/8 118/8 176/8 185/8 244/8 253/8
027/8 092/8 101/8 110/8 119/8 177/8 186/8 245/8 254/8
031/8 093/8 102/8 111/8 120/8 178/8 187/8 246/8 255/8
036/8 094/8 103/8 112/8 121/8 179/8 197/8 247/8
[compton ~]$

>Google must have purchased a small block of these IPs recently
>(72.14.207.0) After I removed that entry and restarted the firewall I was
>able to get to google.com.

You don't actually purchase blocks, but the block was assigned in November.
And in spite of what some think, 'google.com' or even 'www.google.com' is
not a single host. A quick check with ARIN shows

Google Inc. EC12-1-GOOGLE (NET-64-68-80-0-1) 64.68.80.0 - 64.68.87.255
Google Inc. GOOGLE (NET-64-233-160-0-1) 64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255
Google Inc. GOOGLE-2 (NET-66-102-0-0-1) 66.102.0.0 - 66.102.15.255
Google Inc. GOOGLE (NET-66-249-64-0-1) 66.249.64.0 - 66.249.95.255
Google Inc. GOOGLE (NET-72-14-192-0-1) 72.14.192.0 - 72.14.239.255
Google Inc. GOOGLE (NET-216-239-32-0-1) 216.239.32.0 - 216.239.63.255

and that's just the _PRIMARY_ assignments in North America - they also have
assignments from APNIC (Asia/Pacific) and RIPE (Europe). They also have an
IPv6 block, and 31 smaller assignments in North America. As for "google.com
resolves to 216.239.39.99", that name actually resolves to a number of
different IPs because of 'load balancing' on a 'round robin DNS' service.
It also depends on where you are. For example, I get

[compton ~]$ host google.com
google.com has address 216.239.39.99
google.com has address 216.239.57.99
[compton ~]$

And if you think that might be interesting:

[compton ~]$ host www.google.com
www.google.com is a nickname for www.l.google.com
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.99
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.104
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.147
[compton ~]$ host groups.google.com
groups.google.com is a nickname for groups.l.google.com
groups.l.google.com has address 216.239.57.104
groups.l.google.com has address 216.239.57.147
groups.l.google.com has address 216.239.57.99
groups.l.google.com has address 216.239.57.103
[compton ~]$

Hmmm... 216.239.57.99 answers to both 'google.com' and 'groups.l.google.com'.

Old guy