Thank you for the thoughts - got it resolved last night - my ISP is blocking port 80 - i had to set forward port public 8000 to private 80 to finally get it to work - this option was interestingly not available through the netgear page of my router - i had to do a right click on the network and go through the settings option to get it to work.
Thank you all for the help - i am now truly enjoying Amahi
suresh