Finally I found a likely explanation. What I did: Put "exit 0" at the top of the firewall script and reboot. I can ssh 30 times in a row from a nearby computer, but I still can't do the same from my computer at home. So this surely must be the result of some corporate firewall rule at my Universiry which I can't control. Grrr. Sorry for the false alarm. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html