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No - YOU can connect to the computer's local IP because you're on the same local network. The local IP means nothing to his computer though. He needs to connect to your network's public IP, and you need to set up a port forwarding rule in your router to forward that connection to your computer.
Think of your various computers on your network like people in a hotel. Their local/private IP is their room number in that hotel, and the address of the hotel is their shared public IP. Telling a stranger to go to "room 203" is meaningless unless they're already in your hotel. If they're not in your hotel, you need to give them the address of the hotel, and tell the front desk that when they arrive they should be directed to room 203. It works exactly the same way here. The hotel's address is your public IP (what you see when you go to www.whatismyip.com). The hotel's front desk is the port forwarding rule in your router, and your room number is your computer's private IP (what you see in ifconfig).
can i just check a few things with you guys please. when i type ifconfig into my terminal it comes up with many different address numbers. I just want to be sure which one is my actual computer. here is the list I get. the numbers are not wrong, i just changed the numbers for security as i dont know what it reveals.
which one is the computer itself? the one I need him to input.
so my friend in the UK would type in ssh user@133.55.44.77 ( i have created a username and password for him via adduser command on my computer.
No - YOU can connect to the computer's local IP because you're on the same local network.
I get it. thank you
The local IP means nothing to his computer though. He needs to connect to your network's public IP,
great, i understand.
and you need to set up a port forwarding rule in your router to forward that connection to your computer.
i will have to research this, i didnt know about this.
Think of your various computers on your network like people in a hotel. Their local/private IP is their room number in that hotel, and the address of the hotel is their shared public IP.
i get it, thank you
Telling a stranger to go to "room 203" is meaningless unless they're already in your hotel. If they're not in your hotel, you need to give them the address of the hotel, and tell the front desk that when they arrive they should be directed to room 203. rilliant, thank you, i get it.
bIt works exactly the same way here. The hotel's address is your public IP (what you see when you go to www.whatismyip.com). The hotel's front desk is the port forwarding rule in your router, and your room number is your computer's private IP (what you see in ifconfig).
so after i have researched the forwarding rule to the router, what would the syntax look like for the user? would it be the same for him to log in or would he have to have something like ssh usewr@(public ip) private ip
or once the rule has been statd to the router does he just log in as per usual ssh user@public ip?
Assuming your public IP is 111.222.333.444 and your private IP is 10.1.1.33 (from your ifconfig output in post #17), your port forwarding rule in the router would push incoming connections on port 22 to 10.1.1.33, and your friend would run "ssh user@111.222.333.444".
so I set up the port forwarding like stated above and it still didnt work. BUT there is talk about apple airport port forwarding not being compatable with linux? apple and windows works fine but apparently linux wont work. you have to use wine to get it to run on windows. i dont know if this is true because im not savvy enough about all this network stuff just yet. Im actually sick of trying to understand it, Im going to take an online course in networking. I hate that depleted feeling when computers dont do what you want.
but this forum hasd been great for me, ive learned massive amounts asking questions so I will leave this open and if anyone has any news or advise on the apple airport port forwarding I would love to hear it. thanks guys
The people above that mentioned no Linux compatibility were referring to the configuration utility only. Once the router is configured - regardless of how you were able to do it - it would have no issues forwarding packets to a Linux machine since the TCP/IP implementation is OS-independent.
So if you have a Mac, or a Windows machine, or a Windows OS inside a virtual machine in your Linux box, you can just run the OSX/Windows configuration utility to configure the port-forwarding rule on the router to point to your Linux box.
That said, I have -ZERO- experience with Apple routers, so I don't know the first thing about configuring their firewall or port-forwarding settings. To be honest, I'm very surprised they don't have a simple web configuration page like every other router in existence, I thought that was a pretty basic requirement for a router...
Last edited by suicidaleggroll; 04-29-2015 at 05:30 PM.
The utility in the Mac is pretty simple looking but there are settings on it that I don't understand. I'm also not sure if the firewall is on or off. There's no mention of a firewall within the utility itself.
I just don't know why it doesn't work. I have followed everyone's advice, I have tested everything and it just times out. I would love to give someone a temporary username and password so they can figure out what it is. It's not logical at this point.
I would add that I'm not desperately needing the terminal to chat with my firnd. It's a learning curve. I'm just trying to understand all things linux and this is the place where I am stuck.. I'm taking tutorials most days and trying to expand my knowledge.. But this is more than I can handle I think. I keep hoping someone will look at my post and say ' oh no, you need to switch on the wobble board settings " or something.
There must be a network expert out there who can put this right. Come on network expert. Give me a hand.
If you like. I'm not a network expert, but I can see what happens and possibly where the connection drops out. You should send it through PM so it's not out on the web.
wow, cool. so i checked it and it says it cant see it. it can obviously see my public ip but is it saying that it cannot see the port forwarding on port 22? it said the reason is because the connection timed out? what the hell is that?
i gotta tell ya guys, when i get done with this fricken port forwarding thing im gonna write a book about it. ive been at this for days on end. something has to give.
let me do more research and ill get back to you.
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