[patzoul]

I have 2 macs connected to the internet via an Airport base station and an ethernet DSL modem. I have activated web sharing on my iMac and would like to be able to access my web pages via the internet.

I tried to connect to http://myexternalIPaddress/~unixusername but I am getting an error message:
Cannot load address
Temporarily unable to connect: connection refused

Any suggestions?

[Vash]

Do you have port mapping enabled in the Airport Admin Utility? If not go into that, click the Port mapping tab then enter the IP address of the computer you want to be able to access outside of your network. For a port number enter 80 in both public and private. That is what all Internet stuff goes through. Then you should be able to just enter your external IP address.

[Camelot]

And don't forget that at least one version of the AirPort firmware won't allow internal hosts to connect to the external IP address and 'bounce back' into the network.

I don't recall which version this is in. In either case, it's always a better idea to have outside users test the URL.

Don't forget that some ISPs (especially cable providers) often block incoming port 80 connections on residential accounts, so even if your base station does support bounceback, others users still might not be able to get to you.