Tricky for me at least because I have little understanding of networking past how to set up samba and have it actually work(I actually stole and edited a smb.conf from a mandrake machine and edited it so I don't completely understand that either)

I am, quite unfortunantly, using AOL because that is what my mother likes and I don't feel like shelling out money for another line and a different service unless broadband was available
By the way, you can not edit a single property for the aol connection.

anyways this is my current setup:
|Internet|----|windows XP /w aol&proxy server running|---------|hub| ----|3 linux boxes connected through proxy|

I pretty much can not continue to use proxy servers because not many programs I wish I to use actually have the option to use a proxy server.

so I was thinking that below would work:

internet
|
WinXP box with proxy setup
|
Linux box,eth0
take the proxy in and change it so that other computers see it as a connection to the internet without proxy servers set up.
|
Same box but it goes out eth1
|
|hub|
__|___________________________
| | |
Client linux Client Linux Client Linux

I have been reading for hours but I'm just having problems understanding what i'm reading because it's not very clear if it applies to what I need to do.


Thank you for any help, I look forward to being able to actually be able to connect to the internet fully.

does internet connection sharing work with you AOL connection on the XP machine?

most setups like that would have...
internet --- winXP with ICS -- hub --- clients

the winxp ICS shares passes traffic from one connection to the other (dial-up <-> LAN or broadband <-> LAN) and then on the client machines set their default gateway to be the ip address of the winxp machine.

I'm not an AOL user so I don't know what differences that will make, but the setup above would work for any dial-up/broadband connection (or even two LANs)

Use Start->Settings->Network Connections and see how many connections you have (hoping there is at least one for AOL and one for LAN)

I had already tried that unfortunantly. It didn't work to say the least. I think it's because not even windows can edit that connection to add the properties that it needs to it.

and yes, there is a connection for aol but even when it's online it still displays it as offline. Aol is the epitamy of proprietary.

ok,
Thought that AOL would be a bit tricky like that.

you can use the method you proposed of...
internet --- XP -- linuxbox --- hub --- other linux clients

so why not try something like smoothwall or ipcop as a small distro on that linuxbox.

It really depends on what apps you are trying to use on the clients (the ones with no proxy options) because a proxy server usually only serves requests for HTTP/FTP based connections (plus other things like gopher etc.)
If you were using a peer-2-peer type app that wanted to send it's own packet of data out onto the network, the proxy server might not understand what to do with it anyway.

Have you thought about using a linux box to connect to AOL direct
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialAOL.html - but having not tried it, nor having the AOL connection to try it, i can't really say if it works.

Thank you, I think I'm just going to have to switch services...such a loss :-P

Switching services could maybe be more hassle than installing a Smoothwall.
I use it myself, and it has a very easy menu-driven install and good routing functionality. Why not give it a shot if you are out of other options ?

http://www.smoothwall.org

Good luck !