On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 17:23 -0400, Michael.Coll-Barth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > I have built a small network at home for the family using five windows > boxes and one Linux box. Currently, everything plugs into a DSL Modem > for Internet connectivity. > > I would like to change this to have a Linux box ( Pentium II ) > residential serve as a gateway to provide firewall and proxy services. > I suppose that it will also need to behave as a DHCP server? Only if you want it to. If you already have a DHCP server that you're happy with, you can use that, instead. And if your new Linux box sits between it and the rest of the LAN, you can set it up as a DHCP relay. > Will it need a second NIC installed that will attach to a hub for the > other boxes? Yes, if you want it to act as a firewall. It can't do that unless it's in between the LAN and the rest of the world. Other functions like being a server or proxy don't require it, they can just be on the same network. > In addition, it would be nice to have another Linux box (Pentium III) > acting as a web/db/file server. I plan to use Apache and Oracle for > this. You can run a server on the same machine, but it's generally a bad idea to make a firewall dual-purpose. An exploit in one of the other services could be used to kill the firewall. Stand-alone firewalls are the most secure way to do it (whether they're a computer or a dedicated hardware box). > Is Samba still what I should use to store Windows files? Yes. > Is there a mature IIS 6 'clone' or drop in replacement out there? Depends what you mean by IIS, it's a suite of things. Apache, is in my opinion, a better webserver that IIS is. I haven't compared FTP servers, nor other things that IIS can do. -- (This box runs FC6, my others run FC4 & FC5, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
