On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, Jerry Human wrote:
> I'm going to setup a network at home for all my boxes as a way to learn
> networking. I have the following:
>
> 2 Linux Pentium boxes (RH 6.2)
> 1 Windows ME Pentium box (Windows apps)
> 1 Windows 95 486DX box (gaming)
> 1 ADSL account (currently Windows ME)
> 1 Lexmark Z31 Printer
> 1 Apollo Printer
> 2 Panasonic dot matrix printers
> 1 Flatbed Scanner
> 1 Digital Camera
>
> Since I don't know squat about networks yet and RH 6.2 is my primary OS,
> I'd like to know what you experienced people would think is the
> correct/optimum configuration would be for this hardware and have future
> expansion capabilities. Naturally, I'd like to access the ADSL from all
> the boxes.
>
> Please tell me what you think, what hardware would be necessary, where
> to get current docs/principles, what reading I should do and anything
> else you feel would help.
>
> Thank you.
>
Is your ADSL connection an external box, or an internal card? If it is
internal, you may have problems finding Linux drivers for it.
For documentation, I would recamend reading:
Ethernet-HOWTO
Firewall-HOWTO
IPCHAINS-HOWTO
Networking-Overview-HOWTO
Net-HOWTO
IP-Masquerade-HOWTO
For harware, you may want to consider one of the Netgear networking
kits. You get 2 NICs, a hub, and the cables for a good price. I havn't
used the latest Netgear cards, but I have used the older cards with out
any problems. Just make sure the hub has at least 5 ports - 8 would be
better. Also, unless your 486 has a PCI slot, you will have to make
sure you get a 10 or 10/100 hub, because you will not find any 100baseTx
ISA cards. (A switch is even nicer then a hub, but more money...)
I would set up a Linux box as a firewall for your ADSL connection. A
486 or a low end pentium works great for this. I am using a P-75 with
32M of RAM and a 210M hard drive on my system. It is also a WEB server,
and mail filter. I could get by with a lot less RAM - it normaly uses
6M for programs, and only a bit more then 16M with buffers, so 16M would
be more then enough. The main reasion I went with the P-75 instead of a
486 was so I could use PCI network cards.
If all you want is simple firewalling, you can also look at the Linksys
or Netgear DSL router. You can get them for ~$100, and they are easy to
set up. They are not as flexable as a Linux box, and they have limmited
logging, but they do work for a simple firewall.
After you get the basic network up and running, you will want to think
about setting up one Linux machine as a server. You can have mail on
your local network, as well as automated mail retrieval. With a Samba
server, you can share parts of the hard drive to your Windows machines,
as well as sharing local printers to the network. The Panasonic
printers and the Z31 will all work from Linux with no problems. I am
not sure about the Apollo printer.
Home networks can be a lot of fun! Especialy some of the network games
played between local machines...
Mikkel
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
_______________________________________________
Redhat-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
