problem with IpCop and wrt54g being used as a access point

hi! after reading that awesome article on ipcop, i decided to give it a shot on my own network. setup was a breeze, and im really enjoying the features it has to offer. however, im trying to use my old linsys wrt54g as a wireless access point with no luck. i set it to have a static ip and disabled dhcp on it. then i switched the mode from gateway to router. now comes the trouble. i am able to connect to the AP and ping the other machines on my network and they can ping me back. i can even visit local services and web pages and when i try to ping google the host is resolving. however, as soon as i try and surf the web or sign on to aim, etc the server is never found. any ideas on what i could be doing wrong?

btw on the client in question on using Kubuntu 5.10

thanks in advance and sorry for the long post