I have an old Pentium 133 mhz, i would like to turn into a local area network server (if that makes since) i.e. connect dsl to that computer-> p 133 acts as firewall, router, etc. -> connect 1 windows xp comp, 1 linux comp, 1 linux/windows comp. And have linux as the networking software in the pent 133. If that doesn't make since, sorry i'm new to networking and linux.


pent 1.6 windows
/
internet -- pent 133 linux -- celeron 1.5 windows/linux
\
amd k6-2 linux

ok that didn't work..

..........................................pent 1.6 ghz windows
....................................... /
internet -- pent 133 linux -- celeron 1.5 ghz windows/linux
........................................\
..........................................amd k6-2 500 mhz linux

in order to act an internet gateway.... you need only configure IPmasq rules for the Iptables firewall.

Search these forums for specific instructions on setting up IPmasq, as I am sure that question has been answered here many times.

-KevinJ

I have a small home network, and until recently I had a Linux router/firewall/FTP and File server running on an old Pentium 100mhz with 64mb RAM.

The Linux distro is SME Server 5.x and you can download it for free from www.e-smith.org

It is a cut down version of RedHat and is configured for security and ease of use.

I had no experience with Linux and setting this up on a cable modem connection was easy and within a short time it was showing in Windows as a shared drive.

Maybe this will be good for you.

FreeSco www.freesco.org does a nice job for my little home-network. (cable-internet).
Don't know how good they are with ADSL.
PII 200MHz 300Mb harddisk.
Just did a harddisk install. A feature nowhere mentioned, but proven
in practice for me: To shut the Freesco-computer down, I do not run the in Linux
usual 'halt' or 'shutdown -h now' command, but just switch the mains off.
As this is umsdos linux, running in RAM, this does not hurt here. and is very comfortable.

I'm using what they have at BBIagent.net. The entire router software fits on a floppy. It has a wide selection of network cards that you can use. It has a web interface to configure the settings (port forwarding, dhcp, etc.). I've been using it with my cable modem for the last 5 months. I've only had to restart it once, and that after a power outage. Nice thing is, with not using the hardrive it's pretty robust on such occasions.

I just used a mininal install of redhat to get the core kernel and then wrote an iptables firewall/routing script to allow myself to have multiple computers behind the system online. There are quite a few scripts on this site here. I personally found one that I reworked to fit my needs in the security forum. I found that once I learned how to use iptables that I could configure my router to my exact requirements. I have used freesco before and it isn't too bad but I didn't feel I could control everything that went on with the network itself. You can get away with about a 400-500mb install for this kind of system. You can also setup a DHCP server which in my opinion simplifies things. Once you have this system setup you can use Putty or some other ssh program to edit your system from remote.
Goodluck

I don't think it was specifically said, but typically, I would suggest not having your lan server and gateway running on the same computer. If your files aren't too important than I don't see too much of an issue here as long as your firewall rules are setup correctly. It will work fine, but the performance of anything more than a router on a 133 may be rather slow.