/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward shows: 1
...
Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination
I'm not trying to doubt you but either you took the info from iptables before any traffic has passed through the forward chain or there is a problem that is preventing traffic from traversing the forward chain. You did say that you set ip_forward to 1 which should allow traffic to be forwarded. Do an iptables -L -n -v to see if any traffic passing through your forward chain.
Grant. . . .
