Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:47:03 -0600 From: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." <kdk@daleco.biz> To: "R. Scott Kennan" <rskennan@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Home Network, step by step? Message-ID: <41BDC787.40000@daleco.biz> In-Reply-To: <a832a7b9041212204846c889d0@mail.gmail.com> References: <a832a7b9041212204846c889d0@mail.gmail.com>
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R. Scott Kennan wrote:
>Hey everyone, this is my first post. I'm a freebsd Newbie who really
>doesn't know much at all yet, so please excuse my probably lame
>question.
>
>
>
Welcome! No question is dumb, per se; it is worse to not ask
and remain ignorant, IMHO. The quid pro quo is that it is
more appropriate to ask the list on freebsd-questions; I would
guess however that you couldn't have known that without reading
the list charters, which seems like a bother (but may prove
interesting to you later on). It does beg the question, "what's
the newb list for", ;-) but that's not relevant to this post.
At any rate, the question....
>At any rate, I need to network two computers- my BSD box, and one
>running Mandrake Linux 9.2 (for now). I also need to share my
>internet connection. Actually the internet connection sharing is more
>important. What steps do I need to take? All the pages I've brought up
>seem to assume some prior knowledge of both networking and/or Unix (I
>have absoultely none), and I apparently don't even know enough to
>recognise the information in the FreeBSD handbook. I installed FreeBSD
>to learn, but I'm totally lost in this matter.
>
>If anyone can help me, or tell me to RTFM (as long as you point out
>the manual) I'd appreciate it. Once again, Sorry for the dumb
>question. Thanks.
>
>-R. Scott Kennan
>
Darren K. & others have been pointing you in the right general
direction. Using an internet facing **router** instead of a switch
would get you up and going with a relatively small investment of
cash and even less of RTFM. To do it with no/less cash, (but a
counterbalancing investment in time/knowledge gained) you'll need
to use one of the computers you already have and NAT. If you
use a broadband Inet connection, you'll need to run natd(8)
and have a working knowledge of kernel building or kldloading
along with familiarity with ipfw(8); if you have a PPP or PPPOE
type connection, you may be able to run your ppp with the -nat
option, as I do at home (dialup; too many feet out of town here
in the sticks....)
As for routers, I have used the LinkSys BEFSR41 and the D-Link
DI-604* for this purpose in SOHO environments with {relatively}
few problems. Once I learned enough about FreeBSD, I began
to switch out these small devices for old computers (of which I
have a plethora), in order to have more fine-grained control of
things (particularly firewalling and offering more services to the
LAN machines).
To learn the basics of NAT (Network Address Translation), you
should read the Handbook subchapter on "Network Address
Translation" in the "Advanced Networking Chapter" (which in
my current doc build is section .8 of chapter 24 [24.8]. I think
my copy is relatively up to date ... if your doc build [assuming
you have one] is older, the numbering system may vary slightly.
To learn the specifics, there is a section called "RUNNING NATD"
in the natd(8) manual page; it covers the necessary information
for enabling natd in the kernel, adding rules to ipfw(8), and so
on.
Good luck, and welcome to FreeBSD!
Kevin Kinsey
*Heck, buy pizza for the family and I'll send ya the Dlink.... :-D
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