for anyone else who has a netgear WNDR3700 and cannot connect to gtalk with pidgin (i had this issue):

http://forum1.netgear.com/showpost.php?p=220468&postcount=49

http://forum1.netgear.com/showpost.php?p=259460&postcount=19

tldr: WNDR3700 currently can’t handle SRV lookups correctly; solution is to manually set primary and secondary DNS servers on your PC to your ISP’s or another public DNS in the TCP/IP settings of your Local Area Connection