It really depends on what you want to do. Sharing printers/file systems? Internet protection? Wireless? Just learn Linux?
Planning is always the first stage. What are you trying to achieve? What do you have available to use? Old machine kicking around for example. What is your current connectivity? Cable modem, DSL, ISDN, Pringles Can? Do you want static IPs or Dynamic (DHCP)?
My system runs off Comcast cable. The cable modem plugs into one of the interfaces on a Mandrake Linux firewall. The firewall block all inbound requests so no hacking allowed
I have two additional interfaces. One is the wireless interface. It plugs into an Apple Extreme. The extreme base station is as locked down as it can be and the firewall treats it like another internet access point. Data is passed through to the internet but you can't ssh to the firewall. It's also setup for DHCP.
The other interface goes to the internal network. First is a Linksys router. My main computer is plugged into that. In addition, two DLink switches are plugged in to the Linksys.
One of the switches goes to my workstation (I work from home). My VoIP, Sun Enterprise 250 (Sol10), one Sun Ultra 60 (Sol7/8), and work laptop are plugged into that.
The other switch has my wife's old computer, my OpenBSD website mirror, and my other Sun Ultra 60 plugged in.
All the cables are labled (just numbers) on either end. Each of the switches/routers have labels to show what's plugged in where. Heck I have a rack for the computers
Both of our personal laptops (her XP, me Mac PBG4) come in through the wireless connection.
I don't use DHCP on my unix boxes only because I want to ssh over from the mac/xp boxes and I don't want to hunt down the generated IP address. Recently my Linksys went south. I unplugged it, put the new one in place, uploaded the configuration (I saved it) and I was back in business.
But I have a lot of systems. If you just have a couple, a linksys router plugged into the cable modem would work fine. Then plug your linux and windows or mac box into the router and you're up and running.
Carl
02-23-2007
