Hello everyone,

first,Im sorry for my not excellent english. I need Help from someone.
I have OLD PC, which I want to have as a ROUTER,FTP,WEB server...Mainboard has 6 PCI slots. I bought brand new 5 ethernet cards and 1 Wifi card to that PCI's. Topology should by like this: 1 WAN PORT (go out to internet),4 LAN PORTS,and last port for WIFI card.My question is: Is it however possible to make this configuration with linux distribution or windows server 2003/2008?? What all I should do for that??
I spent by searching couple of hours on google to find some guide for that,but not successfully. All I found was configuration for 2 NICs. Please give me any ideas,or guides. THANKS!!!!!

hello.

1. You haven't mentioned what hardware do you have - CPU, memory, HDD.

2. If the hardware is pretty old, are you sure you really want to have all that services (routing, FTP , HTTP) on the same machine? Besides, it's not a good practice to set up many services on the same machine. Though, many things depend on the traffic load and location of the server (in the Internet or in the friendly LAN).
To my mind you'd better use some GNU/Linux than Win 2003/2008 on an old PC.

3. Do you think you really need 5 ethernet cards? Yes, it's possible to set up the router with 1 WAN and 4 LAN interfaces. But it's rather unusual.

1.old pc means: 512 mb of ram ddr2,40gb ata WD,2 GHz Processor,1 dvd rom,mainboard 6x pci,1 vga agp 8x...2x usb ..OLD

2.Most important for me is run that router,with all cards without FTP,HTTP web server,it is secondary ...That Will be used only for Lan pinging by 4 computers in school,becase I have it as a "GRADUAL WORK",..i dont know correct name in english do you understand me? Ok. I think too that LINUX is better solution for my situation as a WIN SVR.

3.I must have it because my work must not be very easy ,so ...what I must do first on start??

There are specialty distributions specifically designed to be used as a router.
Here is a list from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._distributions
One is pfSense which runs on BSD. Some have web based configurations.

Also look in the www.tldp.org website for howtos on routers and switches.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/networking.html

also look for howtos on bonding and the Advanced Linux Routing document: http://lartc.org/lartc.pdf
A gateway computer will probably also contain a firewall, dhcp server, and sometimes a proxy server.

You will also want to read up on firewall rules.
If you want to configure a proxy, that would be done with Squid.

The tldp.org site also contains the O'Reilly book Linux Network Administration Guide.

Thanks for your response. I looked on wiki ,som special distributions, but I dont know which version of distrib is best solution for my situation. Many of distribs supports only 2 NIC, 1 for In , 1 for out + switch ...i want it WITHOUT use swich.

sorry,but I need " cook book " where is step by step..cause Im newguy (( can U help me with more details?

you can try LiveCD router
or see
linux router how-to
or
linux-as-router-for-dsl

See untangle linux maybe also.

I look for www.untangle.com - and there are many of software from that company..Wich from those I should use?

Does have anybody own experience with my problem??

to accomplish this properly you really only need a pair of nics and a wireless card, one nic would be the 'wan' interface and the other nic+the wifi card would be the 'lan' interface (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rfaces-369455/ should give you an idea of how to do that) after that all you need is a hub or switch to split the lan interface into multiple ports, this is how router appliances achieve this as well, except the switch is built in.

This is good idea,but I dont want to use switch...cause it will be too easy on my "Practise Final Graduation"..Is any solution do it without switch builted in,only with 5 Lan adapters + 1 wifi ??

You can use a product that you wish. You need to see what fits your needs. Various distro's offer choices. Untangle is a company like some others that offer both free and commercial choices. Some companies also offer dedicated hardware along with free and commercial choices.