Network ignorance

[joe23]

Okay, here we go. On my linix box at home, I connect to the internet through the @home service. I did an nslookup on my hostname to obtain the IP address. When I got to work I tried to telnet into the box but to no avail.

Okay, I'm dumb. I thought it would work. Is there a way to make this work? I don't know much about networking, so I'm not sure if I need to set something up at home. I have to find away around (through?) the firewall at work, because I can't telnet to my school email. Is this the only thing preventing me from logging in to my home box?

[mrBen]

Couple of pointers:

1. Don't use telnet, because it transmits your password as plain text. This is bad. Use ssh instead, as it encrypts everthing.

2. It could depend on how your box has been setup. Some of the newer distros include personal firewalls, which may well be set to reject telnet (or even all) connections.

3. You may need to add your work IP address to the /etc/hosts.allow file, which is the list of allowed hosts.

4. It's probably best to have ALL in your /etc/hosts.deny box, so that everything that isn't in hosts.allow is denied access.

5. Try pinging the IP to see if you get a reply.

6. I don't know @home @all, but some services use DHCP, which means that the IP changes every so often, which may mean that between home and work your IP address has changed.

HTH

[Taizong]

Check your inetd.conf (or /etc/xinetd.conf) file and insure that telnet is set to start and work. Second, as noted, check your /etc/hosts.alloy and/or /etc/hosts.deny files.

anything listed in hosts.allow is allowed while all others are denied, the opposite for hosts.deny.

And I too stress ssh over telnet, especially in a DSL or Cable enviornment.