At our company, we access shared environments via VPN (Cisco AnyConnect Client). The client then mangles the system's DNS resolver stack so that "internal" hostnames can be resolved properly while the user is connected to the VPN.
This method works for all std CMD line tools, such as ping, etc.
Nelson, however doesn't seem to be picking up the newly changed DNS stack.
Temporary fix: manually edit your /etc/hosts to add the needed hostname(s)