deedee E wrote:
I still have an old computer (i486) running Windows 98 with
some legacy Windows and DOS software -- 52Mb of RAM and 4Gb hard
disk. I believe, but am not sure, there is one i586 left with 128Mb
of RAM and two 6Gb hard drives that I still need to wipe the hard
drives before I recycle it. I'll have to look. However, you need to
be specific as to the capabilities of the "junk." Some junk is
junkier than others, and my junk is particularly junky.
I have my network running on a P1 133 and a 1.2 GB hard drive, it'll run
on a 486 too. I can saturate my 10/100 network with cached files easily,
and the old machine can handle anything I've thrown at it.
I believe the i586, if I still have it, has both a serial and ethernet port.
This would be a great machine to use for the job.
I don't think the i586 has wireless.
You just add a wireless access point to IP Cop to make the wireless
work. You can either add the wireless AP to the protected "green" LAN
interface, or add another Ethernet NIC and put it on a protected
separate network ("blue".) You can have up to 4 Ethernet ports on IP Cop
(with dial-up that'd be 3.) Port 1 is the "red" or WAN (Internet) input,
port 2 is the "green" or protected LAN output, the third is optional and
can be an "orange" sort of a DMZ for local servers on the Internet but
safe from the LAN, and the 4th also optional "blue" is a separate
protected network for wireless, so that the wireless users can't get to
the safe "green" users.
Sounds complicated, but it's all simple point and click GUI setup.
www.ipcop.org is the firewall's home page.
You can use an internal "real" not win-modem, but I always preferred
having the external modem's lights available to see. And the price is
the same anyway.
You've got more than enough machine to do the job. The finished project
will increase your dial-up usability a lot, and make sharing the dial-up
connection easy.
I did this for years and even with 3 machines surfing at the same time
on dial-up, it was still darned good.
The new IP Cop release has traffic shaping now (the release I used back
when I was on dial-up didn't yet) so you can use the GUI to downgrade
some high volume traffic, allowing snappy surfing and still sharing the
connection with various higher-volume traffic types. Again, it's a
simple thing to setup, just use the GUI and you're off and running.
You hear about so many scams that are supposed to improve the dial-up
experience, this is one that works well.
If you want to start small, just get a serial modem and use the internal
Ethernet port on the i586 as the protected "green" LAN output. Grab a
cheap Ethernet switch and jack in the IP Cop machine, your two user
machines, and possibly a wireless AP. Later on you can add a separate
interface for the wireless AP if you're really worried about security.
You can control the dial-up dialing and hangup from any browser on the
"green" network, or can set it up to be "persistent" and stay always
online. It can be set up to dial on demand, too. I used to manually dial
it up via the GUI in a browser on my client machine, and from then on,
it'll keep the connection up until you tell it to hang up, re-dialing
seamlessly if necessary.
Rick Kunath
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