test ssh on private ip

[Running 4.2.3 on solaris with a lot of linux clients]

We have a heavily (some would say 'insanely') firewalled environment. For some clients, I need to be able to test ssh on the private ip address, but even though I have the private ip in the bb-hosts file and have specified testip, the ssh test insists on testing the public address (which it is getting from DNS, apparently) and fails because the firewall doesn't allow ssh connections on that interface.

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks, Steve