IP Maquerading: no connection to external network

[Brendon <bren@europe.nl.com>]

Hello debian users,

I've just set up a machine for ip masquerading which will allow all the other 
machines connected to it access the net, 'least.. theoretically.

the current setup:

Gateway: external ip 195.38.200.201 internal ip 192.162.0.1
Laptop: internal ip 192.162.0.2
desktop:......

the gateway is able to access the net and the laptop.
the laptop is able to ping the gateway on both it's external and internal ip 
but cannot access (ping) external sites by either their ip or name.

I've been using the Maquerading HOWTO and have done everything mentioned, 
without luck. 

Any ideas what could be going wrong?