More developments with my ipchains situation is that if I put
ipchains -A input -p icmp -i eth1 -j ACCEPT
where eth1 is my internet connection, I can successfully ping hosts if I
use numeric i/p addresses.  However, I still can't get responses from my
DNS.  I think I need to open up a port for responses from a DNS.  Even the
dig command hangs.  Do you know what port and protocol should be opened up
for DNS replies?

I don't have a thurough knowlege of TCP/IP just yet <sigh>  and my
/etc/services doesn't have an entry for dns.  It has one for domain (port
53) but trying that didn't do it for me either.

Any more ideas?  Starting to break through this thing once and for all:).