what the funk?

we seem to be having funky networking issues.
i think our name servers are down.

-nope-

they're up. for some reason none of my programs are using said nameservers.... (well, i can ping them, and i can get service IPs from them, too, but i can't ping any IP i get from them. (if i tell dig to use [a name server] i can lookup IP addresses...)
hmm
what exactly am i missing?
gaim doesn't work, logjam doesn't work, telnet doesn't work, ssh doesn't work. fetchmail doesn't work. etc etc etc. however, mozilla works =)
so um, i used to think i knew something about networking. now i'm just baffled. i don't think my computer has any set dns servers... could the dns servers be wrong? i can't ping the IP they return, and i can't ping "google.com" anyway. help?

[update]
things are still broken, but oddly enough, my roommates (running windows) on the lan have no problems.
i am rather perterbed. grrr
debian unstable, 2.4, blah

[second update]
still broken. router is:
netgear RP614v2