• Solution #1: use a host name that corresponds to your real ip address, see
  http://www.dyndns.org. If you have an always-on type connection, and
  either a permanant or fairly long lived IP address, you can map your host
  to xxx.dyndns.org (a free service) and never again have to poke
  around to find your ip.  The netgear box I use knows all about
  this, and can keep the IP<>Hostname mapping up to date automatically.
  
  
  
  
• Solution #2: ask your router.  The router control panel can tell
  you what the external IP address is.
  
  
• Solution #3: ask the web.  When you connect anywhere they see the
  real IP address rather than your private one, so go to some web
  page that will report your apparent IP address.  For example,
  try http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/
  

One slight "gocha" to the above.  If other local hosts, on the same
side of the firewall as your host, want to connect to netacquire, the
may not be able to use your external ip address at all.  You make get
messages from netacquire such as "conneciton forcefully rejected".  In
that case, use the internal ip address to connect direcly to the acquire
host without involving the router.

2) incoming connections to that IP address have to get to your host.
these routers are typically configured to pass outgoing requests
of any kind, but not pass incoming requests at all.

• The router control panel has a section called "port forwarding"
  or something similar, where you can set up specific incoming
  ports to be directed to specific internal hosts.  On my box,
  changing these settings interrupts all active connections, so you
  have to do this in advance.  Assuming you usually host from a
  paticular machine, you can tell the router box to always give
  that machine (identified by the MAC address) the same IP address,
  and to forward port 1001 (netacquire's port) to that IP address.