[Sderby] Worthwhile setting up DHCP and DNS servers?

[David Bottrill]

daverobinson2 at supanet.com said:
>
> Dear All,
>
> Hello everyone, new bloke for the list, with a couple of questions.
>
> We're in the process of setting up a3-box LAN at home, a soon-to-be SUSE
> 8.2
> and a
> windoze xp both using another SUSE 8.2 with a pair of network cards as a
> gateway
> to our NTL broadband.  So far the gateway box is up and running after a
> few
> amusements, will be hooking it up to the broadband today.
>
> Thinking about it and reading around, we're wondering if it'd make sense
> to
> set up a
> DNS server on the gateway box - the theory being that it'll cache the
> addresses we're
> looking for and so cut down the number of requests we're pushing out to
> the
> busy and
> tired ISP's servers.  Do any of you have any experience of this and/or
> words
> of advice?
>
> The other question is whether to set up the LAN to have static IP adresses
> or
> to have
> the gateway box act as a DHCP server as well as a client, handing out
> local
> made-up
> addresses.  The driving force behind this is about to go away, as my
> partner's
> just about
> to leave the job that gave her a laptop, but you never know for the
> future.
>
> The gateway box has got buckets of memory and free disc space, and it
> isn't
> going to
> be doing a fat lot other than connecting us to the outside world: more a
> question of
> "is it worth the hassle" than resources.
>
> Oh, and another thing.	She won't move from XP, but it'd be handy if we
> could
> set up an
> X server on her PC.  She let me put vi on it (though she has to look away
> when
> I use it),
> so she won't object - does anyone know of a decent and robust shareware X
> server for XP?
>
> Shameless brain-tapping, sorry about that.
>
> Cheers -- Dave

Dave,

I would recommend setting up DHCP and DNS on your network it is very easy
and does have a lot of benefits. What I have yet to do is link DNS and
DHCP dynamically although I believe this is very easy to do.

I currently use a LinkSys router to connect my home network to my NTL
cable modem although I'm probably going to replace this with a commercial
firewall in the near future. Another option worth considering is runnning
smoothwall www.smoothwall.org on you gateway PC. Smoothwall gives you
DHCP, DNS, web caching VPN, Firewall and Intrusion detection. It's well
worth downloading the ISO and having a play.

If you want a simple method of accessing Linux from your wife's PC, SuSE
8.2 has a built in VNC server it just needs enabling in xinetd (can be
done in YAST) and then put the vnc client on your wife's PC. Alternatively
have a look at www.nomachine.com their NX technology works very well
although it's not totally opensource.


Dave