IP Networking

I have one PC at home. Opeating Sysem: Both Fedora Core4,Windows 98.
I want to download a LAN simulator for learning Networking (which will work on Fedora4 platform)

Purpose:
To work on a single PC, but as if I am working on a LAN.
I want to check out the Linux networking commands like iptables,ping,make changes in /etc/hosts access,deny files

Will AdventNet Simulation Toolkit 5.0 meet my requirement.
Is there any oter Simulation Software available.(free for download).

If you'r on linux (fedora), you already have a lan capability, its ip is 127.0.0.1
... but if your lan simulator could simulate a network congestion, temp failure and so forth then

Hello, andryk Can you please explain what you meant.

I don't want to setup a physical LAN but a virtual LAN ie want a software that will run only on one pc and simulate a LAN environment (no phyasical connection to other PC
This is so as to enable me to experiment on Linux networking commands like ptables,work with host.access and hosts.deny files

Also I want to experiment on Java socket programming or java network programming(sorrry I did not mention it earlier).But the college's physical LAN is out of order and is hindering my experiments,studies and that is why I want a LAN simulator which will simulate a LAN on 1 single PC.

Please help me.

http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cnet/ <- Try this

If your serious about this, and don't mind spending a bit (or a lot) of money, invest in VMWare (www.vmware.com). IMHO, it's WELL worth the $$$.

You can then set up lots of guest VMs (if you've got substantial RAM), using host-only networking, and have yourself a network on your PC.

As I type, I'm running Solaris 10, Fedora Core 4 and SUSE 9.3 Pro on a Windows XP host. And if I reboot (dual boot), I can do pretty much the same thing from a SUSE 9.3 host. I've assigned 256Mb RAM to each host, leaving 256Mb spare for the host itself. And it all runs very well indeed.

And the best thing about it is snapshots - if you screw things up, you can easily rollback.

Cheers
ZB

Thank you zazzybob,I think vmware was the software I was searching for.
I am surely going to try out vmware Worksation 5.0. I am downloading the trial version this weekend.