I decided to put my wireless troubles behind me forever, and bought an asus w 330 wireless ethernet bridge. Now I can install and update at home! However, ubuntu is taking a really long time to resolve names. I don't have this problem with other linux distros that I've tried since I bought the bridge(mostly live cd's). Windows is fine, too.

Any clues as to what gives?

edit:
for clarification, firefox under ubuntu takes a long time to find the name of a website. For example, if I type www.google.com, it sits for 5-10 seconds saying "resolving host".

run ur own bind service and see if it helps
add this then to ur /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 127.0.0.1

run firefox, and in the address bar type:

find the string "network.dns.disableIPv6" and change the value to true

known issue with ubuntu/firefox.

Much faster, thank you!