From all my reading here it seems like everyone, except me, can use ssh from a Windows/Linux machine to access their N800. And it sounds like everyone, except me, can ping their N800 from other machines. Why can't I do those things?

I'm running the new firmware, which I've reflashed a couple of times to make sure I'm starting clean. Xterm and openssh are installed and work great to let me ssh into my Linux boxes at home and at the office. I've taken a couple of long trips now where the N800 was used more than my notebook computer - no problem at all with many different wireless hotspots. Networking apps like the Mozilla browser, Skype, and Claws-mail work almost flawlessly.

So I'm convinced that my N800 is functioning as it was intended - no obvious problems. But I have never been able to ping the N800 from anywhere else. And I can't reach the N800 via ssh (the sshd process is running and is listening on port 22).

I haven't read about firewalls or anything that needs to be changed before I can access the N800 remotely, so what's going on?

Sorry hybrid, I did not read all of your post, so I removed my suggestions. I will try a few things on my N800 and see if I can think of any things you can try.

One thing I can think of to try is open an xterm and try running the command "tcpdump" by default it should monitor your wifi interface and tell about the traffic on that interface. Then you can do a ping or ssh to the N800 from any other PC on your network and it should show what it sees. If you need help on what the output from tcpdump means you can post it here and see if I see anything that may help.

I beleive you need to run tcpdump as root. tcpdump has alot of options, too many to list here, and some options may prove usefull. If you are not familiar with tcpdump you can do a man on tcpdump on one of your linux boxes or search on the internet for tutorials on it.

OK, silly question. Where is tcpdump? I can't find it on my N800 - is it installed automatically with xterm? No results when searching maemo for tcpdump.

I had a weird issue similar to this with my 770 on my home network. The 770 would connect to the access point and be able to reach the internet fine, but none of the machines on my network could see or even ping the 770, and the 770 couldn't get to anything that was on the pcs on the network. The 770 showed up on my modem's list of connections though. It was very strange, and to be honest I don't know what I did to fix it.

tcpdump is an application that has to be installed. I installed mine from the application manager, although I don't remember which repository I got it from. Whenever I need a program for the N800 I search google with "application name maemo", "tcpdump maemo" . If I find out which repo I got it from I will post it.

on my n800, i have first to generate network activity on the tablet (such as fetching a page with opera) before the tablet actually listen to remote connexion.

I m not sure if this is a bug or a feature though

OK, this is a real pita. I found the repository containing tcpdump, but get errors when trying to install it using the Application Manager. When I use xterm and do "apt-get install tcpdump" I see the errors are related to libpcap and ncurses-bin.

After more research I see that ncurses-bin is already listed as an installed application in the Application Manager, but the size is shown as 0 kB. It won't let me uninstall that, and I can't install it properly.

Grrrrr......

Pamadio had the same answer I did. Unless I was generating network traffic I couldn't connect to the N800. So, I opened an xterm, typed in a ping to the machine I wanted to SSH to, and bingo! Stays up no probs. I hate to have to run a continuous app to do this though.

See bug #1866 and also this thread for a possible workaround, unfortunately the person who raised the bug (hybrid) has dropped off the face of the earth which has rendered the bug report mostly worthless as Nokia will be unable to progress a solution without the input they are seeking.

Fortunately the bug contains enough useful info to possibly help others, but may not lead to a permanent fix (yes, this situation really annoyed me as it's one of the few occasions where Nokia used Bugzilla the way it should be used, only for the community to fck it up and no longer provide any input when prompted! Arghhhh!!)

If this same QoS workaround works for you, it would be really good for everyone else if you could provide feedback to Nokia via Bugzilla bug #1866!