Unable to get pack file

[solomonml]

I am building a custom pfsense image.
I want to clone the pfsense git repository using the following command,
#git clone http://gitweb.pfsense.org/pfsense/mainline.git pfSenseGITREPO/pfSenseGITREPO

but there is an error: unable to get pack file
                            cannot obtain the needed object
Someone told me to change the http protocol to git since http has got some issues for larger files.
And i chaged the command to the following:
#git clone git://gitweb.pfsense.org/pfsense/mainline.git pfSenseGITREPO/pfSenseGITREPO

but still there is error:
      fatal:unable to connect a socket (Operation timed out)

please help me fix this.