Hey! Here we have a 5 computer network, ranging from a small P233 to a large Dual 1.5 processor system. Previously, before we enlightned ourselves with Linux, we ran our broadband connection through a simple Win XP gateway, with firewalls on all the computers. 3 ran Windows XP proffesional, and 2 ran Windows 98 SE.
However now we will be delving into allot of internet banking and handling sensitive information on a regular basis, so were looking for something obviously more secure.
We have managed to get hold of a small 600 Mhz Celeron machine with 128 MB of RAM, 5 gig HD, 10Mbit network card and a copy of Linux Mandrake 8.2. (Though that might be updated to V9+)
We are thinking about a proxy server, but more towards security than caching web pages. Which would be the best software to use? (Squid?) Is the firewall package that comes with Mandrake suffcient enough? And if we were to use the Linux system to root our internet connection through, would the above setup be enough to handle internet bandwidth comfortably?

I understand this may seem very noobish but that would be me

Thanks in advance!

http://firewall-jay.sourceforge.net/

This firewall is text based, no need of using X (security reasons) and let you use masquerading, port forwarding and close useless port, naturally. All firewalls work with the same principle, but the difference is the interface of the setup.
It is very efficient and simple to use, you just need the IP of your different machines and to know the port number of the service you will use. (80 for http, 23 for ssh and so on)

It protects my network very well, give it a try.

Many thanks, I will

So no need for a proxy then?

^bump