I am trying to connect to my redhat9 linux box via Putty or some other SSH terminal program.

Ultimately I want to be able to connect to my machine from work so when I ask the Linux gurus a question I can try it right there. Before I can make that work though I know that I have to make it work over my LAN. As far as I can tell SSH is installed and functioning properly. I can SSH to localhost OR my local IP address 192.168.0.5 from the box and it works just fine. However when I try to connect via Putty or Xshell from one of my windows boxes I don't get anything. It doesn't even act like the linux box is there.

Both my sshd_config and ssh_config files are completely stock, which sound like it should work according to the redhat help files. Any ideas?

IS your firewall forwarding ssh? If you are going to open that port I would make sure you are using public/private key authentication. Otherwise it is probably only a matter of minutes until you will be rooted.

right now the only thing that can access my box is on my LAN. I haven't opened the port up on the router and won't until I can get it to work across the lan.