[ale] Problem with traceroute

[d2ove4deb at bellsouth.net (Jim Moore)]

Installed netselect package and am trying to run the command - 
netselect-apt -n etch -o /etc/apt/sources.list - to determine the 
fastest debian mirror for my updates.
It acquired the list of mirrors and then after a pause tells me that it 
can't traceroute and that possibly a firewall is preventing it from working.
Then I went to the gui net tool in debian and tried a traceroute to a 
known address, Yahoo.  It showed hop 1 as my router, then hop 2 as 
launchmodem, the DSL modem, and never gets past that,  each successive 
hop past that is just a line of asterisks.
How do I get around this, defeat it or whatever.
Jim