its quick to get a usable instance running, to get a usable ports tree,

csup -L 2 -h cvsup.FreeBSD.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile

looking forward to seeing stable on here

Seems to be overloaded for me. I had sucess with this instead (is it the same? I'm noob at this):

csup -L 2 -h ftp6.us.freebsd.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile

Yuck.

portsnap fetch extract

(yet more awesome software from cpersiva)