Sshd problem

[Philip Wege]

Installed freebsd 5.3 , put the box on the local network , used ssh to
setup the box.

Changed ip address to public address and made the box live so to speak.
Ever since the ip was changed i am unable to ssh into the box , logs
show error : Fatal timeout before authentication could occur.

Things like Allow root login and all that was set because ssh was used
just after the ip change did this happen.

Is this a known issue that ssh stops working after an ip change or
anyone got nay ideas on this issue ?