In message <Pine.NEB.4.58.0404071759340.3875@oud-beersal.cs.stevens-tech.edu>, 
Yasir Malik writes:
>Hello,
>I've been trying to setup a snapshot of 2.0 since Friday but with no luck.
>When ever sysinst tries to FTP into the release engineering site, I get
>the following error after some time:
>421 Service not available, remote server times out.  Connection closed
>ftp: con't connect or login to host 'releng.netbsd.org'
>
>I am able to connect to the site, however.
>The weird thing is that when I exit sysinst into the command prompt, I can
>ftp into many other sites, such as Oracle, Microsoft, Sco, ..., but I
>can't FTP into any of the NetBSD mirrors.  What's going on?  Is this a
>problem with sysinst?
>I don't have any CDs on hand yet, so I can't burn myself a copy.
>Thanks,
>Yasir
>

Is there a Checkpoint firewall in the path?  That can cause the 
symptoms you noticed.  Sometimes, this can be bypassed by using a '-' 
as the password.  I haven't tried this, but you might be able to 
persuade sysinst to do that by using its 'shell' option and creating a 
.netrc file.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb