Reliable way to get external IP address

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Finding the Public IP address in a shell script

I'm currently doing this in a script:

EXTERNAL_IP=`curl -s http://whatismyip.org`

There's got to be a built in linux command or something for this, no?

Answer 1

If you mean your source address as the rest of the Internet sees it, then the way you're doing it now is pretty much it. A machine behind a firewall or other device doing NAT will be happily unaware of any address translation done further along.

You might find that http://ifconfig.me is a bit cleaner for what you're after - have a look under the Command Line Interface section on the front page.

Answer 2

No, there is no built-in command, and even the command you suggest may not give you what you want if your NAT device is doing anything more complex then a simple masquerading.