this is still a problem with hardy. i experience exactly the same symptoms as the original poster--sometimes the install hangs as the network goes up/down, retrying enough times will fix it. while the true source of my problems is probably a flaky ethernet driver in the installer kernel or a network cable (new setup, haven't debugged yet), a little robustness would work around a lot of problems.
this is still a problem with hardy. i experience exactly the same symptoms as the original poster--sometimes the install hangs as the network goes up/down, retrying enough times will fix it. while the true source of my problems is probably a flaky ethernet driver in the installer kernel or a network cable (new setup, haven't debugged yet), a little robustness would work around a lot of problems.