so for example after I ssh to a box and do ifconfig -a

I get eth0 Link encap:ethernet HWAddr 32:23:23:23:232:23
inet adder:12:12:12:12 Bcast:12:12:22:22 Mask:12:22:23:23

after this nothing happens and the only way to get out is to kill the console window. Similar thing happens when I telnet to a port.

I've tried this with konsole, gnome-terminal, mrxvt.
I've tried this with a different profile (as root)
I've also tried using putty on a windows VM running on top of
the gentoo box with the same results. The gentoo-64bit install has all
the latest updates as of 2/2/2010

please help

The problem is with the box you are connecting to. Can you open another terminal and check to see if your ssh session has died locally ? It looks like it's waiting for a response which never comes.