[linux-help] Ethernet card setup / Gateway system

["John Lucas" <jdlucas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, all

First off, Thank You to all of you who responded to my last posting
[Wichita, KS dialup service providers?].  All of you brought up some good
points that I will take into serious consideration.  I have not made up my
mind yet, but I will likely choose one of the local ISP's.

Now for my next questions: I am basically a newcomer to Linux.  I've dabbled
at it before, but I've never really gotten into the nuts and bolts of it.  I
would like to set up a networked Linux box that I can use as a kind of
"gateway" between my cable modem and my LAN. (The dialup connection search
was for a relative, in case any of you are wondering... :)  )

Before we get to that, though, I haven't even figured out how to make my
network card come up under Linux.  I have installed RedHat 7.0 Guinness on a
Pentium 166 with 50 Megs of RAM.  The network card was not recognized when
Linux was installed, so I attempted to install the driver myself.  Mistake,
mainly because I really have no idea what I am doing.  I have a Linksys card
that uses the "tulip" driver.  My card came with the tulip.o and pciscan.o
files, and I followed the instructions for installing those on the system,
but when it came time to compile those files, I was presented with a screen
full of compiler errors.  Brick wall (AKA "duh", AKA "I'm lost").

Now, back to the gateway server thing.  I would like to get your thoughts on
the best way to arrange a network so that I can have multiple computers on
line while having the rest of the internet only see one IP.  Can this be
accomplished on a single LAN?  Or do I have to have two NIC's in the gateway
(is that even the correct name for it?) server?

I've heard people talk about "gateway servers" and NAT and "proxy servers"
and "firewalls" etc.,  but I'm really not sure what the difference is
between them, which one I need, or what will be required to set it up.

Anyone know of any books that explain any of this particularly well? (that
might save some of you a lot of typing!)

Any help with ANY PART of the questions in this posting would be greatly
appreciated.

THANK YOU again for all your help.  This list and the people who use it are
an awesome benefit to the Wichita Linux community.   (sorry if that sounded
a little corny...)

--John


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