I haven't had any trouble with Steam at all.  I'm behind a router as well.  Hopefully it's an issue that's been resolved and you can get online again. 

Never got resolved.  I did everything they suggested, and I even did my own research on the matter and discovered issues with the verizon issued modem/router and went so far as to bypass it and try a new router (one I bought partially for 1gbit filesharing, but also in the hopes it would resolve the steam issues).  No luck.  A simple google of "a connection to the steam vac servers could not be made" reveals how common this issue is with no concrete solution.  In cases where it's not the router, not the port forwarding, not anti-virus or hardware/software firewalls, there is no answer from steam. 

The conclusion I and many others have made is just that steam is buggy software.  Be thankful if it works for you.

I tracked down the issue to drivers and issues with the onboard nic.  I had recently switched from the old trusty 3com 905b-tx to the gbit onboard.  Made more sense once I got the 1gbit router, but since I've not been using steam very long, that's the only connection steam has ever been over.

Once I switched to the gbit router, and realized there were all sorts of issues (including connection cutting out and file transfers between my NAS and computer resulting in BSODs).  I was able to trace this to the marvell driver.  I bought a new intel nic and everything is working perfectly

Don't know what your name is (unless you are phoenix there as well).