I finally was able to connect to Palantir 2.6 from the WAN side. The problem was my fault: I don't know enough about Linux yet. After reading some more in my brand new Linux books I saw my silly mistake: I set the gateway up incorrectly.

THE WRONG WAY:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

which yields the following routing table:


Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
default 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 br0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

THE CORRECT WAY:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 (that is, do not enter the netmask)

which yields the following routing table:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 br0

IN THE CORRECT WAY THE GATEWAY IS THE LAST IN THE LIST! IN THE WRONG WAY IT IS FIRST. MOREOVER, THE Genmasks are different.

Since the way the routing table is used is well documented (I now know!), I will just state a couple of key points. Suppose that I am trying to connect to Google (66.249.93.104). The routing table will be inspected line by line from TOP TO BOTTOM. In the wrong setup the first line, the gateway, will be rejected (I am not explaining the details here), and so will the remaining two lines. In the correct setup the first two lines will be rejected, but the last line, the gateway, will be accepted. The result is a correctly functioning gateway.

A real beginner's mistake!

A final remark: I went on a long wild goose chase with the nvram. Again not going into details, every place where it mentions the lan gateway I fixed things so that it said 192.168.1.1. This did not solve my problem nor did it seem to hurt the functioning of the wl500gx. I WOULD APPRECIATE KNOWING WHAT THE CONNECTION IS BETWEEN THE nvram AND THE routing table.