Linux

At home, I have a consumer level cable internet service.  I actually do not know if I have a dynamic IP address or a static IP address because I haven’t really cared enough to ask my ISP.  I would assume that I have a dynamic IP address since most ISPs charge a premium for a static IP address, but since I don’t know for sure I thought I would find out for myself.

Using http://whatismyip.com ’s “automation” page, Perl, and cron, I am going to maintain a list of my external IP addresses.  Not only will this answer the original question, but I can also gather some additional information, such as how often my IP address changes and whether or not I can force my IP address to change by disconnecting my modem :).

For those that are not familiar with Linux, X11 is a part of the graphics system, and that is really all you need to know for this short blog entry. Below is a video that demonstrates what forwarding x11 over SSH will actually allow you to do: in the video, I run a remote session of Kate (a Linux text editor) and Gwenview (a Linux image viewer) from my Linux machine to my Windows machine. It’s similar to remote desktop, but instead of the whole desktop, you can use certain applications. You’ll see what I mean in the video if you’re not following already.

The first step is to configure SSH client and server on your Linux machine. Instead of repeating what’s been written a thousand times before, I’ll send you to the Ubuntu SSH Server instruction guide. If you use a different distribution, you can look up it for yourself if you have to, but as far as SSH goes it is pretty much the same wherever you go.