Help wanted - complicated LAN suggestions!
 

Hi,

Please could you kind ladies & gents help me on a slight topology problem. Well, to be honest, I don't know where to start!
Basically, we have a house with 8 PCs, and 2 PS2s which are *hopefully* going to share our 1Mbit ADSL connection (From Freedom2Surf). I am having trouble deciding what equipment I need to purchase (being the IT geek of the house, I got lumbered with it..... withouth quite knowing what to expect.....financially too!). We have diffrerent PCs on different levels of the house, and I was thinking of using Switches to link them all up - and in turn linking the switches...

To explain it as simply as I can, the following should explain the layout... The coloured switches are to not get confused, in theory!

1. Telephone socket -> Ethernet ADSL Modem

2. Modem -> Switch 1, Socket 1

3. Switch 1, Socket 2 -> Server (Debian 3.0, 2x NIC - for web-dev, games server - see Note 1*)

4. Switch 1, Socket 3 -> Firewall NIC 1(Sun Sparc Station 20, with 2x NICs, running RH6.2)

Can you picture this yet...?

5. Firewall NIC 2 --- Short Cable--- Switch 2, Socket 1

6. Switch 2, Socket 2 --- 40m Cat 5 Cable (got this already...)-- Switch 3, Socket 1

Out of Switch 3, comes cables to 1x PC Workstation (Mandrake 10), 1x Sun Ultra 1(Solaris), 1x PS2 (Tony Hawks, he he) (my room :-)
Back to the switches...

7. Switch 2, Socket 3 --10m cable upstairs-- Switch 4, Socket 1

8. Switch 4 splits into 4 cables, to connect to others computers. Ignore the second PS2 for now!

What cables to I need to connect 2 switches together?
Am I missing anything - like a Router or something?
The switches will be the cheapest going from eBuyer or something!

Part 2 (Basically, Note 1):

I purchased 2 IPs of my ISP, and these will hopefully point to 2 sub-domains of mine: beta.canterburyonline.net (for local web-dev), and games.canterburyonline (for a dedicated games-server...). The server is OUTSIDE the LAN (I mean, the WAN side of the Firewall). It has 2 NIC, so presumable, I can assign an IP to each one....
Does anyone know of any good HOW-TOs for setting up a simple http server?
Basically: 2 IPs, 2 NICs, 2 Sub-Domains, ONE server.... how?

Part 3 (The plot thickens...)

I have been assigned IPs, and also given a subnet (255.255.255.252) for the IPs. Pressumably, the subnet is Freedom2Surf's, and the IPs I got are on their network?
How then, do I set up my own LAN with different subnets?
I wish to set up everyone inside as: 10.0.0.x/255.0.0.1 for simplicity's sake!
I got given a Primary DNS, and Secondary DNS via email too - do i simply insert these IPs into the Network Settings in XP, and Linux etc...?

Any help much appreciated - and please tell me if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick, and making life very complicated for myself....

Ali (aka DJ Tribal)

I forgot to say, I have a D-Link 4-Port Router (1 WAN, + 1 Uplink too) - where does this come in?

Your router goes in between the modem and switch 1, port 1.

I wouldn't recommend using 255.0.0.1 as a LAN subnet mask - it more than likely won't work. For a little info on subnet (warning: involves math): http://www.firewall.cx/ip-subnetting-intro.php. Unless you don't want certain computers talking to each other, avoid funky subnets. 255.0.0.0 is the default.

I got lost when you mentioned the server.

you may also look at going wireless
but setup a server to get the public ip from your isp and then your other nic would get assigned the 10.0.0.0/8 subnet
switch to switch you could use a regular cable, most now are capable of auto crossover.