I will be configuring a new server for my company's network to sit between our T1 line and our gateway router.

I want this server to hold 3 Gbit NICs, the first for the T1 connection coming in, the second going out to the gateway router, and the third going out to a wireless router (so that it will be isolated from the rest of the network).

I'd like this server configured not only to forward the T1 connection to the other two NICs, but also act as a gateway (for packet sniffing if necessary, to locate users sucking up bandwidth) and web proxy with caching (to lighten the load on the T1, and block inappropriate web sites).

I am not new to Linux by any stretch; I've been toying with it for about 8 years now. I'm also not an expert, however. I have little experience setting up Linux servers in this way, and am looking for resources, pointers, suggested distributions, and tutorials on how I could accomplish the aforementioned goals.

Any and all responses with any information that could point me in the right direction will be greatly appreciated. I know how to use Google, so even a suggested search query for tutorials that would help would work fine- whatever you can offer.

Thanks in advance for your help, LinuxQuestions is a wonderful community.

Alex

I use a custom iptables script, squid, dansguardian, snort/base and ntop works well