macOS SSH and Mac OS X -- How Friendly?

Have you opened the firewall/turned on the service on the other machines on the local network. (they are Macs, right?) System Preferences -> Sharing -> Services -> Remote Login -> Start?

bobber205 said:

But however, I cannot connect to local machines using local ip addresses. Why is this? It keeps saying "Connection refused".

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So if I understand correctly, you're forwarded SSH in your NAT router configuration to your MBP. From the internet, you can SSH throught the router and log into the MBP. But once logged into the MBP, you are unable to telnet or ssh to any other computer behind the NAT router?

Are you sure you can do this locally? Are you logging in as the correct account?

bobber205 said:

Last night, I did a shutdown on a local computer via logging into it via ssh.

Awesome!

I can log into the "root#" account. I did it last night and that's what account I'm getting as default today. is that the problem?

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I suggest you login as yourself to prevent accidentally deleting something you shouldn't. E.g.

ssh mhaase@myhost.net

In this syntax, I'm asking ssh to login as user "mhaase" on the machine myhost.net. Otherwise, ssh tries to login as whoever you are on the local system.

As root, you could do something like "rm -fr /" that would effectively hose your filesystem. As yourself you would see a lot of warnings and hopefully stop it before you deleted any of your personal documents. This is why people generally warn against logging in as root. Log in as yourself and use sudo when you absolutely need to do something you can't do as yourself.