thanks for the quick reply and advice!
i'll take your advice and give my ISP a shout
however, I remain skeptical because my ISP, Singnet (in Singapore) has bundled voip, voice and etc into the router and may caused some issues with the request. In addition, i've checked and found my port 9000 to be open (http://www.canyouseeme.org/).
the issue seems to be, whenever somebody logs on via buffalonas, the redirect info reaches Singnet's proxy address instead of my intended IP address with 9000 opened port resulting in "internet cannot display yadda yadda..."
cheers
kave