Networking 101 [Was: Re [Glastonbury] Firewall and Cable] [LONG]

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 11:27:09PM -0700, Maurice Onmaplate wrote:
> 
> --- "Andrew M.A. Cater"
> <amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > OK.  
> 
> Lots to absorb!
> 
> Sad thing is I was hoping to convert my ailing,
> ver-slower, Win 98 machine into a fully useful machine
> by going Linux.  Space is tight and no room for
> another PC [Julie would go ballistic!]. 
> 
> The choice is thus linux firewall or linux machine.
> 
OK.  No problem.  You've got more than one machine already and
three printers IIRC - so a network would benefit you both.

Although the counsel of perfection is separate machines, it's not
absolutely mandatory and a must have.  

It is also sometimes conceptually simpler to be dealing with one machine 
_purely_ as a firewall: you don't do work on it, don't store data on it, 
lock it down and log in as root as little as possible.

BUT, all that said ...

A firewall in your current machine (as provided by SuSE) and one network 
card should be all you need.  An Ethernet hub/switch is small, silent and 
takes almost no power - one of mine can even be powered from a keyboard 
socket and both are chucked under the desk - and a minimal cost item
(less than the cost of an up to date copy of Norton SystemWorks and 
Personal Internet Firewall - you run these on your Windows box already,
don't you?? ) :) 

This, then, assumes the following as a final configuration:

Cable modem -> USB -> Linux PC net card -> Hub/switch <- (other machines)

Switches mean slightly faster internal network speeds and a greater
isolation between network ports and (allegedly) better hacking 
resistance but in a home network connecting via ADSL, internal network 
speed doesn't matter so much.

[The fastest my cable link can go is 2Mb/s so a 10M card on the "outside
world" address is fine and a gigabit card would be overkill :)  So's a 
10M hub for daily use - if you get to be throwing multiple CD images 
around or multiple GB of Photoshop images, then just buy a faster switch 
at that stage. Virtually all modern cards are 10/100 autoswitching out of
the box :)

I've got SuSE 8.0 as my latest SuSE - it supports USB and common ADSL
modems out of the box as far as I can see.

All the very best - there _is_ a lot of reading, but reading and
understanding is never wasted.

Andy