fc6 - connection timeouts

[rmoktali at vsnl.net]

hi,
FC6 on an Thinkpad R51.
issues:
i586 kernel problem, yum does not work, not able to google.
[root at localhost ~]# yum install yum-utils
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=core-6&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (110, 'Connection timed out')>
Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: core

can anyone point me where to look?

in firefox, i am also not able to access google, sourceforge. times out. (ping shows no loss)
no issues with www.fedoraproject.org
tia for help,
rm