Update: with accurate and timely advice from Corion and davorg, plus Chatterbox help from davorg and le, I had quite a bit of success with everything but CPAN.pm itself. Manual make/install of Net::Telnet::Cisco displayed pertinent errors that CPAN.pm kept hidden, which led me to successfull manual make/install (upgrade) of Net::Telnet, and then back to manual make/install of Net::Telnet::Cisco (this time successful).

CPAN.pm being unusable might be result of Debian's down-rev Perl 5.004.04, or perhaps from the way Debian packages a few CPAN modules as .deb's.   Could easily be something specific to how my host is setup.   Other Monks of the Debian persuasion care to share their experiences?

Update #2: another PM reference on installing modules:  (manually, not with cpan.pm)
perlman:perlmodinstall

Update #3: With young perlhopper's suggestion below, I took a closer look at /usr/lib/perl5/CPAN/Config.pm. This one works on a Debian host at work.   I'll compare with suspect Config.pm at home for diffs.   Also found that txt.gz files in $HOME/.cpan/sources/authors/ and modules/ had to be deleted after fixing incorrect urllist entry.

Yes, I know I need to point my urllist to a mirror   <grin>   I just want to get this working first.

$CPAN::Config = {
  'build_cache' => q[0],
  'build_dir' => q[/root/.cpan/build],
  'cpan_home' => q[/root/.cpan],
  'ftp' => q[/usr/bin/ftp],
  'ftp_proxy' => q[ ],
  'getcwd' => q[cwd],
  'gzip' => q[/bin/gzip],
  'http_proxy' => q[ ],
  'inactivity_timeout' => q[0],
  'index_expire' => q[1],
  'inhibit_startup_message' => q[0],
  'keep_source_where' => q[/root/.cpan/sources],
  'lynx' => q[/usr/bin/lynx],
  'make' => q[/usr/bin/make],
  'make_arg' => q[],
  'make_install_arg' => q[],
  'makepl_arg' => q[],
  'ncftp' => q[],
  'no_proxy' => q[ ],
  'pager' => q[/usr/bin/less],
  'shell' => q[/bin/bash],
  'tar' => q[/bin/tar],
  'unzip' => q[],
  'urllist' => [q[ftp://cpan.valueclick.com/CPAN]],
  'wait_list' => [q[wait://ls6.informatik.uni-dortmund.de:1404]],
};
1;
__END__
[download]

Update #4: aaaaall better now   8^P  
My ignorance of make and the CPAN.pm shell were source of all my grief.
Solutions:
= correct syntax and sequence for make.
= proper configuration of /usr/lib/perl5/CPAN/Config.pm
= valid urllist entry (CPAN mirror)
= delete corrupt $HOME/.cpan/sources/*.txt.gz

Mondo thanks to Corion, davorg, le, and young perlhopper for their help.   ++ all around.
    ybiC

p.s. would this mess be worth sanitizing into a mini-FAQ?   Or better yet, just a brief addendum comment to Aighearach's excellent CPAN.pm FAQ.