A switch to Linux
 

Hi guys! Long time no see. I miss you so much. In my last thread I asked about the default gateway. Some of the members in this forum replied. Hereby I would like to thank you for your kindly answer.

But I'm still confused about the default gateway and router(Don't laught at me. I'm not as smart as you do). Hereby I would like to ask a question concerning the network. Hope you can give me a detailed answer.

I work in a junior middle school. In our school,we have more than 100 PCs. According to the headmaster, all of them should be able to access the Internet.

But I DO NOT have a router. So I use a PC as the default gateway (IP 192.168.0.254), and every PC in the LAN can surf the net easily.

We use internet to do a lot of work, surfing the net, download software, online chat (msn, yahoo messenger),sending and receiving Emails,etc.

I use Windows 2000 Server edition as our default gateway operating system. As we know using windows means you have to spend a lot of time in trouble shooting. I'm getting sick of these boring work. So I am wondering if I could make a switch. A switch from Windows 2000 server to Redhat Linux.

But I have no idea. What should I do and how could I get the work done. Do I have to build up a Linux gateway or run a Linux PC as a router. Will squid comfort my needs?

Waiting for your reply. Thank you again.

Redhat Linux would (obviously) have no problem being your gateway server. I'm presuming you're basically talking about installing RH on your current Win2K box, erasing Win2K?? Which would mean that if the box is already your gateway, it will already have 2 ethernet ports, one for the WAN and one for the LAN. Once RH is installed, AFAIK, you'd need to bridge the to ethernet ports. You can do this using iptables.

As for squid, this would be useful if you wanted the RH box to act as a proxy server as well as a gateway.

Hope I've understood what you were asking and that I helped.

--Added--
It's worth noting that if you're uncomfortable installing RH over Win2K you could download Knoppix and boot from the CD on your gateway, leaving Windows completely untouched. You could then experiment with Knoppix. This will give you a rough idea of what would be involved in setting up Linux as a gateway.

Hi,

If you don't really know Linux and don't want to spend hour configuring RedHat to fit your requirements, I would suggest you to try some specific distro like IPCOP which are tailored to do gateway/firewall stuff. Moreover with such a distro you don't need deep Linux knowledge... Some network knowledge are enough ;)

Oliv'

SmoothWall Express is another dedicated FW distro.

If you decide to try it, be careful, SmoothWall Express formats every HD in the box it's installed on. This is a security measure & cannot be changed. So, if you want to preserve your W2k install, you will either have to remove its HD from the box when you install SmoothWall Express, or install SmoothWall Express on a different box (w/ at least NICs).

IPCOP was originally derived from SmoothWall Express & may/probably exhibit the same behavior.

Thank you. Hereby I would like to repeat my confusion. The question that I'm not quite understand is:
1. How to make Linux as my default gateway. And
2. If I have already made Linux my default gateway. Do I have to configure SQUID? In other words does the default gateway and squid have the same function?

I have read your post and it is touching seeing that you have a passion for exploring a bit with linux but take care while you experiment on your connections.
Now its very straight forward that once you get it you will be amazed at what it can do. One, linux comes with squid which as you were informed earlier on will help you configure a proxy server which will be queried by all the machines on the Thus acting as your networks Default Gateway although this would work better if you had a firewall hardware like soniwall for security and also for performing Network Address Translation for your LAN. Two you should have two ethernet adapters if you want to implement it as a proxy server:one to the lan the other to the WAN.Three configure squid to limit access from various ports(see man squid for this) just to tighten the security.
If you need further assistance dont hesitate to post you problem.
Cheers

If you are interested in internet content filtering, then you should take a look at Dansguardian. I have no experience, but it is often used in Linux servers set up in schools.
FWIW

Thank you for your kindly replies! I'll try your plan. And I'm sure I'll continue to work hard on Linux.