I can't connect to my mine craft server!

In the past, i had a successful mc server but i took it down. I want to put one back up so i go throughout the normal process. the server is up, i used port map, everything is working fine but when i use the actual ip i can't join. I can join from localhost but when i use the ip it says connection refused. I double checked whatsmyip and it said my ip and then a proxy. Is the proxy the cause of the problem? If so, how do you fix it?