In my dorm room I have two computers hooked upto the internet via a router. My desktop, with windows on it and my laptop with slackware on it. My first problem was that since both computers shared the same IP, I could not SSH from my windows desktop to slackware. That situation was solved by simply using the network ip address. I can SSH to slackware from windows using the network address. I can SSH to it from my buddies room, using the network ip address, also. As of right now, though, I am at home. I'm obviously off the network. I tried to SSH to my slackware laptop from here, but the network ip address just timed out. Well, I thought, duh, I'm no longer on the network, I must use its actual ip address as found as IRC and from ipchicken.com. I cannot SSH to it using that IP either.

I don't think it's a problem with computer settings - because I can't ping either IP either. Anyone know what might be going on? I'm not quite sure what to think of this.

If I understand correctly, you have two computers behind one external IP address. You try to access a SSH server on the linux one, and it doesn't work.

Is your router configured correctly?

Yes, it sounds to me like you need to configure your router.

If you don't know how, try http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1.  You can find the default passwords online.  If it's not your router, then you're going to have to talk to whoever runs it to get port 22 forwarded.

Another (un)common LAN address for routers is 172.16.0.1. That's the one that two of my three routers defaulted to.

[quote author=Newby link=topic=10348.msg97229#msg97229 date=1106983646]
If I understand correctly, you have two computers behind one external IP address. You try to access a SSH server on the linux one, and it doesn't work.

Is your router configured correctly?
[/quote]

See, I'm not quiet sure. I actually have a netgear "switch", my bad. check it out here. But yeah, both computers have one external IP address. I cant SSH to my linux laptop from outside the network. That sound like switch problems, or the network is configured to not allow outside connections like that maybe?

It's most likely that you're behind NAT, behind that "both computers have one external IP address". You'll need to specify port forwarding on your router (which means, in laymans terms, you are correct that the network is configured to now allow outside connections, but you might be able to change that). Lookup the SSH port (22, IIRC), and have that be forwarded from the public IP address to your Slackware box. Being that the hub you're connected to is a switch instead of a router, that is probably not the device that you need to connect to. But, if "both computers have one external IP address", then there's a device somewhere down the line that is. Lookup your gateway address, and try connecting to it with HTTP.

Go out and get a router for $30, it should fix your problem.

If NATing is happening, then he definately has a router somewhere.

Besides your two computers, what is your switch plugged into?

Try doing a traceroute to, say, google:
[quote]iago@Slayer:~$ traceroute www.google.ca
traceroute: Warning: www.google.ca has multiple addresses; using 64.233.171.104
traceroute to www.google.akadns.net (64.233.171.104), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.862 ms  1.601 ms  1.549 ms
2  wnpgmb11dc1.mts.net (205.200.28.28)  31.276 ms  34.742 ms  30.711 ms
3  wnpgmb0221w-dr02-v952.mts.net (142.161.133.2)  32.275 ms wnpgmb0220w-dr01-v952.mts.net (142.161.133.1)  31.836 ms wnpgmb0221w-dr02-v952.mts.net (142.161.133.2)  31.722 ms[/quote]

The very first one is my router.