I'm not very knowledgable about networking ideas and concepts, so here are some concerns.

Here is the current situation. I am soon about to acquire a subscription to a cable modem service, and I have three boxes that will need access to it - two windows 2000 boxes and a linux box running on the 2.4 kernel series (it's slackware 9.0). I however, am trying to come up with a cheap but effective solution to doing this. My first idea was to just buy a router and hook all of the boxes up to this, but then it was suggested that I set one box up as a DHCP server to take place of the router, and then just purchase a hub to connect the other two boxes to the DHCP serving one.

My concerns are the ability of a Linux box to act as a possible DHCP server for Windows boxes, or the ability of a Linux box to connect to a Windows DHCP service. Are there issues that I need to be concerned about? Will the box acting as the DHCP server need two network cards and need to have %100 uptime? Would this solution end up being cheaper with the purchase of a hub and a possible additional network card? Would a router allowing access to all computers regardless of the uptime of the others be worth an extra cost?

Thanks in advance

I bought a router when I went to broadband. Saved me a lot of configuration. Plug it in and go. foreward ports with your web browser, etc. too easy.

I did have two computers networked when i was on dialup (since dialup routers cost a fortune). Since I wanted to use the Windows-only internet call manager software, I used ICS and connect them through a hub. The computer running the ICS (NAT/DHCP) had to be on for the "client" to access the internet. It cost less, but it required one to always be connected. I set the IPs static after a bit so that I could get a faster bootup on the client (no DHCP poll).

Routers aren't that expensive. I'd suggest that you go that route unless you've a burning desire to learn how to do it the other way (and buy a second NIC for one of the computers...). If so, look here for some linux-specific help.

i would recommend going with a router if you are just looking for something to get the job done. it is much easier to configure/troubleshoot and you dont need a machine running 24/7 they are not much more expensive than a hub or switch + an extra network card.

however, as vectordrake said, if you are really interested, then you have the perfect oppurtunity to learn something.

regarding your compatibility questions, dhcp is dhcp. a windows box should be able to get a lease from a linux dhcp server and a linux box SHOULD (stressing the SHOULD ) be able to get a lease from a windows dhcp server.

i think probably the only compatibility issue you might run in to would be sharing filesystems (ie netbios shares for windows and nfs (and others) in linux). samba is probably your ideal solution for this problem.
I believe the official website for samba is http://www.samba.org.

if you don't already know about samba you should check it out, you will probably find it useful.

skel

Yes, I did that with my dialup setup. Windows serving and Linux taking the lease (Mandrake, Debian, and actually FreeBSD for a while)

That also works, but the frontend is not quite as friendly to use as dragging and dropping yet.