Sometimes it helps to watch what clients you are connected to.
Set your connections to more than 10, wait till you are connected to valid nodes like limewire or bearshare and then do your search.
After you get your results, set the number of connections back to normal.

The original poster also mentioned he was using the LAN only client, doesn't that mean you have to tell it who to connect to in a "buddy" list?

Try the normal client, the LAN version is for when a small group of people know who to connect to.

Post forwarding is a good keyword to put into google or to look for in your router's instruction manual, and normally 6436 is the port that gnutella clients use.

It's not just your firewall on your computer, if you have a router that needs to have port forwarding set up.