Linux – How to prevent TCP connection timeout when FTP’ing large file

I am not able to FTP (retrieve) a large file from the Internet to my Linux VM. It times out after a while.

The actual error is "Could not read reply from control connection — timed out."
This error occurs after a few minutes, after a good chunk of the file has already been transferred.

The setup is:

FTP Client:  ncftpget running in Linux on VMWare Player 3.0
FTP Server:  somebody else's machine out on the Internet, configuration unknown
Guest OS:    Ubuntu 8.10 Linux 32-bit, with vmxnet and vmware tools installed.
Host OS:     Vista 64-bit
Network:     Linux VM connects to the Internet via Bridged NIC (also tried NAT)
FTP Mode:    PASV

I did find some forum postings mentioning a 2-minute timeout somewhere. But exactly where and how to fix it was not clear. Some troubleshooting steps already tried:

• I have switched from VMWare Player 3.0 to VirtualBox 3.0.x, but no luck.
• I also changed from NAT to Bridged virtual NICs, but no luck

UPDATE
Netstat on the Linux VM and the equivalent admin page on the DIR-655 router both show the connection is alive and well (tcp 'ESTABLISHED' status). Vista doesn't see the connection at all, which I guess is normal if connection state is managed only within the VM.

Here's the output from netsh interface tcp show global on Vista, in case it's useful:

C:\Users\alex>netsh interface tcp show global
Querying active state...

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State          : enabled
Chimney Offload State               : disabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level    : highlyrestricted
Add-On Congestion Control Provider  : none
ECN Capability                      : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps                 : disabled
** The above autotuninglevel setting is the result of Windows Scaling heuristics
overriding any local/policy configuration.