Question : Why is URL address redirecting automatically to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.URL?" target="_blank">www.URL?</a>

All of the sudden the intranet url ( lets say: intranet.company.com) started failing.
After troubleshooting a found the following symptoms:

1. The server does respond to ping and telnet to port 80 (not using ssl)
2. The intranet works fine if opened from within the server is located.
3. I used webscarab to intercept requests and responses and found the following:
  - The first request sends it correctly to intranet.company.com
  - Then a second request is immediatly sent (without any server response) to
      www.intranet.company.com
  - Since this url does not exist, the result is a "Page cannot be resolved".
  - However, if I add the www.intranet.company.com to the host file, the page works fine.
4. I tried doing the same with using the IP Address, and here are the results:
  - The first request sends it correctly to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  - Then a second request is immediatly sent (without any server response) to
     www.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  - Again, since this url does not exist the result is a "Page cannot be resolved".
  - However, if I add the www.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx to the host file, the page works fine again!

Anybody have an idea of what is changing the URL without a server response?

Could it be the DNS server?
Any other thoughts?

Answer : Why is URL address redirecting automatically to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.URL?" target="_blank">www.URL?</a>

Some browsers have a habbit of trying to prepend a short name with www after failure to connect.

A DNS server doesn't do this. Also verify that your server doesn;t send you a redirect (webserver configuration) to the other URL, or some Javascripting from people that thing www means it's a web server...

In either case it has to do with how a server responds to a query.

You could use a tool like curl (http://curl.haxx.se) to debug this type of trouble.