Hi,
At the moment, I have a LAN set up at home. All of the computers on it are of the ip address class 192.168.1.*. What I want to do is to have a switch coming off that, and off of the switch put several computers of the ip class 172.16.*.*. Is this possible? What are the pros and cons of doing so? I'm thinking of doing it to regulate traffic in and out of the segregated network / between the two.
Could anyone either explain how to do this, or the pros and cons of doing so. I'm thinking that what I have to do is to use a linux box as a router, with two network cards in it. One has an address of 192.168.1.x, and the other has an ip address of 172.16.x.x. But then, how do I let the computers in one talk to another? I would have to set up the computer as a gateway somehow...
Many thanks in advance,
Andy

Here is what I think needs to be done:

You are right about the Linux box acting as a gateway/router, I suppose it would be something like this:

Router IP: 192.168.1.1
I
I
\
\___ Subnet : 255.255.255.0 IP's: 192.168.1.*
|
|
\___ Switch
/
|
|
\___ Linux Box (NIC1: 192.168.1.10 (for example)
| NIC2 : 172.16.1.1 (another example)
|
|
\___ Subnet 255.255.0.0 IP's: 172.16.*.*

I think that may be it

On the Linux box you would have to have IP Masquerading setup on it:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/IP-Masquerade-HOWTO/

As for pros and cons:

Pros:
- Better handling of network traffic – as you said

Cons:
- May be a bit tricky to setup

If all else fails, just experiment.

Hope this helps

Okay,
I think I've almost got it. So far, this is my setup:

internet
|
|
|
|__router [192.168.1.1]
|
|
|__switch
|
|__various computers [192.168.1.*]
|
|
|__a linux gateway [192.168.1.x; 172.16.x.x]
|
|
|__switch
|
|
|___various computers [172.16.*.*]



is this right? I think it should work. The questions is, how do I set up the linux gateway? With iptables, I presume - can anyone confirm that this is possible just by using iptables.
Many thanks in advance,
Andy

Wahay,
I've got it set up now))
andy

Nice one