Hi, Joey: On 1/25/07, Joey S. Eisma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
1. what are the differences between the two? what are the advantages of one over the other?
A gateway, as the name implies, acts as an entrance (or exit, depending on how you look at it) to another network. A proxy, on the other hand, makes requests on behalf of clients in its network. The distinctions are a bit hazy, but we commonly use proxies for HTTP/FTP, although it is not uncommon for SMTP and other protocols to be proxied as well. Same is true with a gateway device. As for advantages, well YMMV -- these will depend on your requirements. If, as you say, you need to provide internet connection to a networked PC, a proxy *may* suffice. One advantage, I think, of a proxy is if it is a "caching" proxy -- the performance on access times can be enhanced up to some extent if there is a cache for the networked hosts.
2. if i use a proxy, i may configure squid, what about a gateway? what software do i need?
IPtables?
3. which is more secure?
Trick question. :) Security is a process, not an end result. You can secure *both* of them to a great extent. Again, it depends on how you want to use them. For gateways, you can opt to allow only certain traffic to go through. The same goes for proxies. Again, YMMV.
4. in this setup, the gateway is actually NAT?
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but a gateway *can* use NAT for internal hosts. Hope that helps. -- Ian Dexter R. Marquez http://iandexter.net | [EMAIL PROTECTED] (XMPP) _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
