First, hello and thanks. Please be gentle, this is my first debian-users post.
Whilst installing debian-stable I am encountering the most bizarre behavior: During the apt-setup stage, using ftp or http, the "Connecting" stage of opening an apt mirror takes upwards of a minute, but the actual file transfers happen quite fast over my DSL. First I thought this might be alleviated by forcing apt to do passive ftp transfers using the apt.conf line 'Acquire::ftp::passive "true";', but this didn't help. Because the linux machine is behind a NAT firewall that might have been causing grief, I tried setting apt-setup to use http, though this didn't help. So I set apt.conf to include 'Acquire::http::Proxy' of my firewall's http proxy. While apt was happy to now use my proxy, it still took about a minute to connect. Now, I've been watching my firewall's debug output, and after the apt-setup program DNS queries the mirror's name, nothing happens for a minute or so, then suddenly a burst of http requests flow by as it retrieves the files. I've tried looking through the archive and searched google a million different ways, but have failed utterly to find an answer to this. Also! If anyone is still reading: The debian install guide makes absolutely no mention of the apt.conf options and I had to look far and wide to stumble on the apt.conf man page because by that stage of my net install man pages were not yet available...
