My sincere thanks to everyone for your helpful pointers. I've got a much better grasp of how to approach this but I'm still a little unclear about a couple of things. It looks like I can set up a router on the box to handle NAT which resolves internal and external IP addresses. The internal IP addresses should be like 192.168.0.x. But is that all I need? Do I need to give different computers different names? They can't all be local.localhost, right? Does that mean I need a DNS? What I'm trying to do is set up a small home network to teach myself some things like networks, firewalls, iptables, etc. and the box I'm setting up now is many of these functions as possible and as an Oracle server. It's asking a lot of 1 box but I'm not looking for performance. Thanks, Bruce Randy wrote: > > I think you need two DNS *ADDRESSES*, not two DNS *SERVERS* <snip> > If you are setting up a home network, and the linux server won't be >your firewall (it can't, if it doesn't have two network ports), then I'd >recommend going to the local Walmart or Best Buy and grabbing a $30 >hardware firewall/router....Most are also set up to provide DHCP >addresses to any computers on the internal network.... <snip> > Alternatively, if you have multiple network ports, you can set up a >separate DNS server for every local subnet, reserving one port for the >internet connection of course, then set up a NAT (network address >translation) firewall with iptables. Alexander Dalloz wrote: > >You don't want to run a public DNS. If your aim is to allow local >network hosts to be able sometimes to get an internet connection for >updating i.e., you then need a gateway that does NAT. This is pretty >easy to be done with Fedora Linux and iptables. Deron Meranda wrote: > >The bind DNS server supports what are called "views". In essence this >allows one DNS server to act like it is multiple servers. It is most >common to use views with a DNS server on a network boundary >(firewall), where one view is for all the hosts inside on the LAN and >another view (usually much sparser) is presented to the outside world >on the Internet.... <snip> >Note that you don't necessarily need to give names to any IP addresses >you set up; which means you probably don't need to worry about DNS at >all. Colin Brace wrote: > >The ASDL router-modem that I have can be configured to run DNS services >for clients on the internal network, but I have my doubts about this; it >seems to fall out on a regular basis and I recently reconfigured my >setup to use the ISP DNS servers instead. Do you have any experience >with these router-based DNS options? Are they a viable alternative? _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
