cable/dsl

[Kendric Beachey]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Tony Hammitt wrote:
>What the heck, while we're on the subject, here's my setup:
>
>RoadRunner cable modem -> 10/100 switch -> firewall box
>                                        -> other computers
>
>The firewall box uses masquerading to allow the others to use
>the cable modem and uses ip aliasing so it only has one NIC.
>
>All of the other computers use ipforwarding to connect to the
>firewall box.
>
>I was running every-box-for-itself, but at $10/box for extra
>IP addresses, the masquerading setup saves me lots of money.

This is similar to my setup, which is...

Road Runner -> NIC#1 of El Cheapo box
NIC#2 of El Cheapo -> 10/100 5-port hub
hub -> my computer
hub -> wife's computer

The El Cheapo box is parts I picked up at Computer Garage for cheap.  The case
was $12.50, 3.5" floppy was I think $10 (although they have them for $5), ISA
NE2000 clone was $10 (again, they also have $5 jobbies), and the motherboard
(486DX2-66, 20 megs of RAM, floppy/IDE controller card and cables, video card
all wrapped in plastic) was $50.  There is no hard drive.

El Cheapo is running Edge router (see http://edge.fireplug.net) from the
floppy.  Long boot time, but I typically just leave it on indefinitely.  All
filesystems are ramdisks, so sudden power outages are no biggie.  Edge is easy
to set up (*way* easier than I made it for myself!) and free (both speech and
beer style).  From my inner lan, I can telnet to the box through NIC#2, but
NIC#1 offers absolutely zilch to the outside world as near as I can tell.  That
is the stock setup--no tweaking on my part.  I've never had any trouble with any
protocol not getting through or anything like that.

My geeky daydream is to one day install ssh on the gateway machine, so that if
I need in from outside I can ssh to the gateway, and from there ssh to the
machines on the inner lan.  But I don't have a need for that just now.

The upshot of this huge wad of jargon is:  Edge is easy and works great.  It's
definitely worth a look if you don't have something set up yet.  Oh, and
Computer Garage has good cheap stuff.  :-)

--
Kendric Beachey
ak at kc.rr.com