Seting up a desktop as a router.

[Kevin MacNeil]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 06:04:11PM +1200, Rob Brown-Bayliss wrote:

> Hi, where I live we have several PC's and have decided to get an ADSL
> connection.? What do I need to do to set up my FC2 machine as a router
> for the windows PC's?? Thinking using squid for every one as well...

I run ipcop (http://ipcop.org) on an old pci 486/100 w/16 mb ram on my
home network, e.g. dsl modem > ipcop box > switch > network. You can get
such machines for nothing these days. Obviously, you're going to need a
little more horsepower if you want to use squid or snort, but they're
both included and easy to configure.

It's safer to have a dedicated firewall machine than turn your regular
full-featured desktop into one. 

You can obviously turn a fedora box into a firewall / router / proxy,
but since ipcop is designed from the start for that purpose it's so much
easier to do. No wish to inflame any potential zealots, just stating the
facts as I see them ;-).