[ILUG] Eircom's netopia 2247NWG-VGx, external ssh and hopping my head off a brick wall

[Stephen Dunne]

Evening chaps & chappesses. I have a bit of a problem with my parents
Eircom ADSL and I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains.

Parents have just been commissioned on ADSL after years of flat rate
25 :D They were given an Eircom branded 2247W-V2 (from memory) with an
Eircom customised OS. (6.x I believe)

All up and running along with an old Vaio running gentoo behind it. So
far so good.

Now I also have sshd running on the lappie for obvious reasons, along
with a ssh sized hole in the router's firewall. This hole doesn't appear
to work :(

When I was over there setting this up I was connecting from my own
laptop onto the local LAN, I could ssh into my parents box with wild and
gay abandon. So I know sshd is configured OK.

>From memory I added the SSH service via the basic settings menus and
custom services ? I'm pretty sure I defined it correctly, port 22
forwarded to 192.168.1.100 (the laptop's internal static IP) but as the
Eircom basic menus don't seem to be documented anywhere I can't verify
this by talking my Mum through them to check. (If I talk my Mum through
enabling remote access, the bloody router appears to reboot as soon as I
access it remotely and hit the define custom service button in the
services menu) These routers don't reboot automatically on *enabling"
remote access, do they ??

I've searched the list archives and seen a couple of threads implying
similar problems. The longest thread seemed to be resolved without a
final summary saying what exactly was changed, just some nebulous
reference to a windows box getting in the way ??

So, in my inimitable and rambling way, has anyone successfully opened up
an Eircom netopia 2247W to external SSH ?? If you have, and especially
if you managed it in basic mode, would you mind sharing the magic
utterances you used to get the netopia to play ball

(last resort is to talk my mum through setting up a reverse ssh
connection back into my own server, then piggyback on it back into her
laptop. It should work, but I'd rather get the router working as it
should)

I'm assuming in all this that Eircom don't filter out port 22 further
upstream :(

Regards

Stephen