You may want to check out GnatBox Lite. It's the freeware portion of a commercial product that does NAT and real firewalling and fits on a floppy. There are some limits to the Lite version, but they are mainly for folks who stick servers behind it. All you need is a 486 with 2 *supported* NICs (check their list first!). I used it for a little while many moons ago and it performed admirably.
http://www.gnatbox.com/Pages/gblight.html Pros: You don't have to learn Linux (or *BSD) and can instead focus on learning useful networking skills like making good firewalls and VPNs. Cons: You don't have to learn Linux (or *BSD) and will never be able to walk around like a god-among-men. Another way to do it is a to slap Windows ME (boo! hiss!) on an old machine and use their "internet connecton sharing". Cheers, Robert Kennedy On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, Benjamin Bradley wrote: > Hi, I'm about to (hopefully) set up a LAN between the (4-5) computers in > my house and would like to share a cable modem connection between them. > We're thinking of setting up an older computer to be a dedicated gateway > system. My question is: how fast does this gateway need to be? It seems > like it wouldn't have to be very fast since all it's doing is NAT, but I > don't want to get stuck with bad service. > > Also, is there any sort of step-by-step guide anywhere to set up this kind > of thing? I'll be honest: linux scares me. I know it's the best way to set > it up, but I realize that I don't know nearly enough to set this up on my > own - much less troubleshoot it when things mess up. > > open to all suggestions > thanks! > > - Benjamin Bradley - "these strange things happen all the time" > - http://lostpoet.tripod.com/ > - whee life what a rush > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Send administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
