Phoenix Network Forums

i have a small network at home. my computer has fedora core 4 installed on it, and the others have windows xp. how can i make my computer route the pakets, so that the other computers can access the internet?
in windows it was easy, because i just had to enable internet connection sharing but i'm new to linux and can't do this in fedora.

I know this won't be as easy as clicking a button, but this might help:

http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbi ... pmasq.html

Since I have never really needed to do this, I can't much comment on anything about the process, but there might already be a tool in place for this Fedora. I've never used to distro, so again, I can't much help there.

Take a look at the website though, read the overview, it looks like what you asked for

reki wrote:http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbi ... pmasq.html

val4o wrote:http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/ ... ation.html

Hmmm

The first link is one of the links I used when I was student with a redhat 6 or 7... Ipchains is obsolete don't use it. Try to do it with iptables. The second link is too short...

You can find example of iptables scripts here : http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/
And the official website with NAT tutorials & documentations (german/french/italian/english/hungarian/spanish and may be others languages) here : http://www.netfilter.org/ (documentation section)

Oh, come on, actually making the IPtables scripts is all well and good, but the easy way of setting up a packet router is either using a graphical front end for iptables like shorewall or maison (which creates the rules for you depending on how you browse the net and what apps you use and so on) or, look up m0n0wall, IPcop, Endian firewall, Clark Connect, Astaro and or anything else I might have missed.

ASWGR ASG

Pete wrote:but there are some advantages of doing this via a router:
1) cheaper on the electric bill
2) less noise due to all the PC fans not running
3) less heat due to less PC's using the electricity

Unless of course the PC were to be on 24/7 anyway in which case it would be cheaper on the electricity bill and the other 2 would still apply

I'd have to ask you a simple question... why?

Get a decent Wifi/Router (I trust my D-Link) that has a few ports and a firewall. That way all of your computers are behind your tight firewall and if you want to do fancy stuff you can set up port forwarding and virtual services (all is standard on my D-Link wifi router).

By routing your packets through an intermediate machine introduces a bottleneck on that machine, and pretty much puts a limit on you throughput. Realize that the kernel is doing software NAT for you, but a router is faster because it is all hardware.

From a security stand a router and firewall with optional virtual service redirects is the way to go. Plus if your machine goes down you aren't stuck having to re-configure it's replacement all over again. And don't forget you'll not only need to setup your NAT, you'll also need to setup your own firewall with iptables (or ipchains, if it's still around)...

So you can see more benefit to going with the router...
1. Security
2. Performance
3. Scalibility
4. DHCP and Virtual Servers
5. Cost (My D-Link cost me $40 about 2 years ago).

Hope this helps...