Strange problem with DSL modem.

[Jason Osgerby]

Hello all,
 
I am hoping someone on this list can help me out with a very frustrating issue I am having. I dual boot one of my machines (a Dell Dimension 2400) with Windows XP Pro, and connect to the Internet via an Actiontec GT701-WG DSL modem with an inbuilt wireless gateway. Now, under Windows XP, I can access the Internet just fine, and do anything that I need to do. Of course, Windows XP is a slow, buggy memory hog, and I simply hate using it. 
 
So, I decided to install FreeBSD 5.3 on a separate partition. After performing a basic system install from CD, I wanted to add several items from the ports collection, such as Fluxbox-devel, XMMS, MPlayer, Firefox, ROX-filer, and all the other good stuff that I like to use. So, I started running the "make install" for Fluxbox, and it gave the usual message about not being able to find the source in my local ports directory, and then gave the normal blurb about fetching it from http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/fluxbox/fluxbox-0.9.10.tar.gz.
 
The problem is that it is totally unable to download anything at all. All of the fetch requests to any of these remote servers just time out after hanging there for about a minute or so. I re-checked that I had configured the DHCP connection correctly, and no problems there at all. So, I did a simple ping of Google.com to make sure that I had a working Internet connection, and the ping responses returned in a timely fashion as usual. Yet still, the "make install" command just freezes up when attempting to download anything.
 
Obviously, I wrote an email to Actiontec support immediately, asking for assistance. They responded to say that they don't support FreeBSD. After a couple of minutes of cursing, I decided the best thing to do would be to ask you all about this problem. Anyone have any idea what is going on here, and if there is anyway I can fix this? I am totally at a loss.
 
Thanks!
 
Jason.

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