i am building a test lab for my current project which is a satellite download set up. i have four linux test machines, each with two nic cards. each machine needs to have one card listening to the satellite and the other card talking to the lan. i started by first just connecting the satellite and configuring the static ip's so that they could ping my satellite receive hardware. then, i tried hooking up the network and configuring that nic but i couldn't get it to talk to the network unless it hosed up my connection with my satellite. how do i get these nics to work together? can i set the satellite card up to receive only? how do i do that? haven't messed with linux much, never had seen it till about four months ago, so any help would be great. thanks

Kris

Ok, if i'm understanding you correctly, you want to share that satellite connection with the rest of the network?

Simple enough.

First, you've got to realize that nics will be called Eth0, and Eth1. It depends on which driver is loaded first, as to which will be which.

Are they both the same type of card?
If they are, then the same driver will run each card and you'll have to do a little testing to figure out which is which.

Now, what you need to do is set up some routing tables that will let the networks talk to each other.

Do a search for routing tables, iptables, and check out www.tldp.org for how-tos.

Good luck, hope i understood what you wanted