Hi Billy,
I'm using AP as well, but the ppm is trying to connecdt to the modlue repository you have chosen, so please read the the ActivePerlDoc, e.g. "..Perl\html\faq\ActivePerl-faq2.html" for detailed information, especially the section about proxies and firewalls.
So the reason seems simply to be, that ppm is looking for the modules in a different location than you do.
where "DIR" specifies the directory on your system, but instead of givibg this "DIR" you can also pass an URL here.