Get The External IP of Any Machine You're On

If you ever need to figure out the extenal IP of your machine (/sbin/ifconfig only returns your internal IP) you can use the follwing command:

wget -O- "http://checkip.dyndns.org"

From your desktop you can simply his the webpage listed in the weget, but if you're logged into a machine on ref, you'll need to wget it. You should get something like the following in response:

--14:23:32--  http://checkip.dyndns.org/
          => `-'
Resolving checkip.dyndns.org... done.
Connecting to checkip.dyndns.org[GXMMS:63.208.196.105]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [GXMMS:text/html]

   [GXMMS:<=>                                                                  ] 0
            --.--K/s
            \\\Current IP Check\\
                \Current IP Address: 63.215.196.180\
            \
   [GXMMS: <=>                                                                 ] 106
   103.52K/s

14:23:32 (103.52 KB/s) - `-' saved [GXMMS:106]

This is the bit you're interested in:

Current IP Address: 63.215.196.180