Directory Permissions on FreeBSD

After several hours of going through books, and other resources on the internet, I could not find anything that says what the file permissions should be, on these Directories. I am fairly new to the world of *nix. And I want to make sure I keep it secure. And I don't like the idea of ppl being able to browse through these Directories. But I don't want to block read access, just yet. Because I am not sure if it'll 'disallow' the legitmate users from executing programs.
Any input is very much appreciated. Below is the list of Directories and the default file permissions.

drwxr-xr-x bin
drwxr-xr-x boot
drwxr-xr-x cdrom
drwxr-xr-x dev
drwxr-xr-x dist
drwxr-xr-x etc
drwxr-xr-x home
-r-xr-xr-x kernel
-r-xr-xr-x kernel.GENERIC
drwxr-xr-x mnt
drwxr-xr-x modules
dr-xr-xr-x proc
drwx------ root
drwxr-xr-x sbin
drwxr-xr-x stand
drwxrwxrwt tmp
drwxr-xr-x usr
drwxr-xr-x var

Also, when I use sftp to connect to my box, it connects very quickly, but when I use standard ftp, it takes upwards of 30-45 seconds to connect. What would be the problem?

Not trying to promote another site but if you go to www.unixhideout.com you can get any help you need with FreeBSD. The admin Sagacious ( aka ro0t ) is a wiz with BSD. He is avalible to answer questions on irc.unixhideout.com port: 6667

Also if your using the box as a server there are some good tutorials in the forums about the Unix Route command so if someone is attacking your box or leeching your **** you can just send them on a one way trip to dev/null and they wont be able to access your box anymore. As well as how to set up watch, using cron to update and a few others.

I am sure that someone here can probably answer your question but I just wanted to throw that at you to let you know in the future if you need help with anything and cant get it here they can help.

Hey, Euclid. Thanks for the information. I'm sure it will be helpful some time down the road.