RFC on solution to Rejean's situation

[Alex Snow]

I'd say the router should probably have at least 32mb possibly 64. 
I've seen a pentium 133 act as a router for about 25 or so computers 
all making heavy use of the internet and connecting to each other 
using smb shares.
On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 05:59:57PM -0600, Luke Davis 
wrote:
> Hello, folks
> 
> After talking to Rejean about solutions to his situation, we came up with
> the following.  I would like comments from the users experienced with this
> sort of thing, about whether our solution will work as I believe...
> 
> Now, the groundwork, and useful information summary:
> 
> 1.  The network consists of many Windows machines, and a single Linux
> machine.
> 
> 2.  The Linux machine is a public access server for web, mail, and FTP,
> and a private access server for samba.
> 
> 3.  The internal network is switched.
> 
> 4.  There is both a cable internet connection, and an ADSL internet
> connection.  Both of these are necessary for their own reasons.
> 
> 5.  The windows portion of the network should use only the DSL connection.
> The Linux side should use only the cable connection.
> 
> 6.  The Windows and Linux boxes must communicate for purposes of samba.
> 
> 7.  The current configuration is this:
> The network of switched Windows boxes, go through the DSL router.
> The Linux box goes through a router, which connects to the cable modem.
> The Linux box, has a second card, which links it to the Windows network.
> This is not ideal.
> 
> So here is the proposed solution, to solve all problems of security,
> compatibility, connectivity, and so on...
> 
> 1.  He sets up an older computer, as a dedicated firewall/router, running
> one of the tiny Linux floppy distributions, which exist for this exact
> purpose.
> 
> 2.  This box would have four interfaces, configured as follows:
> eth0: cable modem.
> eth1: ADSL modem.
> eth2: Linux server.
> eth3: Windows network.
> 
> 3.  Eth0 would accept traffic for, and outgoing traffic from, eth2.
> Eth1 would accept traffic for, and outgoing traffic two only, eth3.
> This creates a box which is basicly split, into a Windows router, and a
> Linux router.
> 
> 4.  The Windows side, would accept no inbound connections (that is:
> through the ADSL modem), accept those desired by the Windows network--that
> is: related connections to those established by it.  It'll be doing one to
> one NAT, and firewall duty.
> 
> 5.  The linux side, will have connections related to anything it creates,
> as well as incoming connections to its services.
> 
> 6.  Either (A) private samba connections can be permitted between eth2 and
> eth3, with the modems being none the wiser; or (B) a separate connection
> for samba use, can be created either between the switch and the
> routing box, or it can be made from the switch, directly to the Linux box.
> 
> Questions include:
> 
> 1.  Will this work as well as I believe it will?
> 
> 2.  How much memory will this routing box need, given a large quantity of
> data transfer per day?
> 
> 3.  What else might we not be considering for this?
> 
> 4.  Is this overkill?
> 
> Thanks for any comments, and for reading this novel.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Luke
> 
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Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?