building a router with multiple nics (no external switch)

xtravar · 07-17-2009, 11:04 AM

I'm familiar with the "box with 2 nics + switch" router setup, but it's hard to find info on the "box with 4 nics and no switch" router setup.

How different is the former configuration to the latter? Reason being, I want to make a file server/router and have the maximum throughput for each connection.

So just to be clear, I'm talking about making a linux router with 1 nic connected to the cable modem and then multiple nics connected to multiple computers (or switches) sharing the same network connection.

Thanks.

rbees · 07-17-2009, 04:50 PM

I am not a server expert but I have set up a couple of dhcp/nat/firewall servers. I don't think there is much difference. But I do see two things that may take some work to get figured out.

1. Assuming that this is a dhcp/nat/firewall you may have some issues getting the dhcp server to assign ip's to the nic's the way you want. You may be better off using static ip's for that reason.

2. You also may have some issues getting your firewall to work.

I wish you success.

win32sux · 07-19-2009, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xtravar

I'm familiar with the "box with 2 nics + switch" router setup, but it's hard to find info on the "box with 4 nics and no switch" router setup.

How different is the former configuration to the latter? Reason being, I want to make a file server/router and have the maximum throughput for each connection.

So just to be clear, I'm talking about making a linux router with 1 nic connected to the cable modem and then multiple nics connected to multiple computers (or switches) sharing the same network connection.

Thanks.

If you're familiar with working with a WAN and LAN interface, adding LAN interfaces isn't a big deal at all. Of course, it all depends on what exactly you plan to do, but generally speaking the only additional work is a few more iptables rules and maybe some tweaks to your daemon's configuration files to get them to behave the way you want them to with regards to the interfaces.