1)
See the user forum
http://fusesource.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=3932&tstart=0

Many organizations have http proxies, in-house maven repos (nexus etc.), and whatnot.
We should look into improving our docs to provide more details how Fabric resolve Maven artifacts when creating new containers.
This can help users to setup the Fuse products accordingly to their needs, and have it work.

2)
See user forum
http://fusesource.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=3925&tstart=0

Also we should hint that the created remote containers should be able to resolve the hostname, otherwise the remote containers may not be able to join the fabric etc.
And maybe from engineering point of view, we could improve the code in fabric, to make a better error report when this is the case.