Port Forwarding for a local SSH Server (RouterOS)

Question

I have just finished setting up my home SSH server and It's working nicely, all I need to do now is make it publicly available so I can access it when I'm on another network, now sounds simple enough right? Well I'm sure it is but I for some reason can not get it working for the life of me..

Here's what I have got configured for the port forwarding in RouterOS (v6.47.9):

Chain: dstnat
Dst. Address: (my public IP address)
Protocol: 6 (tcp)
Dst. Port: 1024

Action: dst-nat
To Addresses: 192.168.1.125 (my SSH server IP)
To Ports: 22

What I want to do is login to my SSH server via my public IP address, essentially in my mind this would be done like so:

ssh (machine username)@(public IP address) -p 1024

Anyway, any help would be much appreciated.

(If required my sshd_config file is located below)

#      $OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.103 2018/04/09 20:41:22 tj Exp $
# This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file.  See
# sshd_config(5) for more information.
# This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
# The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with
# OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where
# possible, but leave them commented.  Uncommented options override the
# default value.
Include /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/*.conf
Port 22
#AddressFamily any
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
#ListenAddress ::
#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
#HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
# Ciphers and keying
#RekeyLimit default none
# Logging
#SyslogFacility AUTH
#LogLevel INFO
# Authentication:
#LoginGraceTime 2m
#PermitRootLogin prohibit-password
#StrictModes yes
#MaxAuthTries 6
#MaxSessions 10
#PubkeyAuthentication yes
# Expect .ssh/authorized_keys2 to be disregarded by default in future.
#AuthorizedKeysFile     .ssh/authorized_keys .ssh/authorized_keys2
#AuthorizedPrincipalsFile none
#AuthorizedKeysCommand none
#AuthorizedKeysCommandUser nobody
# For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_ho>
#HostbasedAuthentication no
# Change to yes if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for
# HostbasedAuthentication
#IgnoreUserKnownHosts no
# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files
#IgnoreRhosts yes

# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
#PasswordAuthentication yes
#PermitEmptyPasswords no
# Change to yes to enable challenge-response passwords (beware issues wi>
# some PAM modules and threads)
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
# Kerberos options
#KerberosAuthentication no
#KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes
#KerberosTicketCleanup yes
#KerberosGetAFSToken no
# GSSAPI options
#GSSAPIAuthentication no
#GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes
#GSSAPIStrictAcceptorCheck yes
#GSSAPIKeyExchange no
# Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing,
# and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will
# be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and
# PasswordAuthentication.  Depending on your PAM configuration,
# PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass
# the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password".
# If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without
# PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication
# and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'.
UsePAM yes
#AllowAgentForwarding yes
#AllowTcpForwarding yes
GatewayPorts yes
X11Forwarding yes
#X11DisplayOffset 10
#X11UseLocalhost yes
#PermitTTY yes
PrintMotd no
#PrintLastLog yes
#TCPKeepAlive yes
#PermitUserEnvironment no
#Compression delayed
#ClientAliveInterval 0
#ClientAliveCountMax 3
#UseDNS no
#PidFile /var/run/sshd.pid
#MaxStartups 10:30:100
#PermitTunnel no
#ChrootDirectory none
#VersionAddendum none

# no default banner path
#Banner none
# Allow client to pass locale environment variables
AcceptEnv LANG LC_*
# override default of no subsystems
Subsystem sftp  /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
# Example of overriding settings on a per-user basis
#Match User anoncvs
#       X11Forwarding no
#       AllowTcpForwarding no
#       PermitTTY no
#       ForceCommand cvs server
PasswordAuthentication yes

Answer 1

First is making sure your ISP isn't doing CGNAT, in which case you cannot forward ports at all without first asking them to do it in their end. You can check this by looking at what IP you've been given. If it starts with 10., 100., 172. or 192.168. then they're doing CGNAT.

If it's not CGNAT, then unless your WAN IP never changes you will have to reconfigure this every time your internet connection drops and reconnects (as your ISP assigns you a new WAN IP). Use the in-interface field with your WAN interface instead of dst-address so it always works no matter what your currently assigned IP is.

You can check if the port forwarding is working by the traffic counter in that firewall rule.