apparent ftp failure during ftp upgrade 7.2 to 8.0

i have noticed other folks complaining of ftp installations failing shortly after yast announces that it's going to look for a braille device. this has happened quite a few times, now, to me. i finally realized that the rpm downloads were going much too fast and that apparently they are not being downloaded at all. i booted the boot.iso cd image and have tried installations from both suse.com and georgia tech. i am trying to upgrade a 7.2 system to 8.0 and at this point, thanks to some deletions the installation program made, i reckon i'm running about 7.1 1/2. if no one has any suggestions, i'm going to have to reinstall 7.2. bc