Re: At Last

["Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>]

Without stepping on the fingers of any of the network experts
on the list...

My suggestion would be to
(1) Stick with the "simple" DSL configuration for public access.
(I.e. *one* public IP address).

This can, and probably should be a Linux box upon which you
keep the OS updated for security purposes.

This is your "gateway" machine.

You use "Squid" as the internal gateway to the Web.

You use "Samba" to allow the Linux box to connect
to files on any of the Windows machines and vice-versa.
(Samba can serve as a Windows domain controller).

You use "NFS" to connect any of the "internal" files
on various Linux machines to the gateway for external access.

You use "SSH" to allow external folks to get to the "public"
server and remotely access any "internal" machines.

Any WiFi equipment should be put into place only after careful
considerations regarding security issues.

(2) When and if Tom (or others) decide to go to some higher
bandwidth connections (e.g. cable/satellite), though I suspect
this will require going to IPV6 due to the current shortage
of IP addresses, then you simply assign the gateway machine
multiple IP addresses.

The only flaw I'm aware of in this situation is if the gateway
machine happens to go down (but then that isn't much different
from the DSL line going down...).  Tom isn't in Florida but
I'm sure he has seen his share of "mother nature" acting up.

Also if Tom has a 4-wire twisted pair running into his house
I think he can run 2 DSL lines though I would expect performance
to suffer from time to time (but this is just speculation on
my part).

I'm reasonably sure that there has been enough testing and
security built into the packages I mention above that there
should be minimal problems on that front while still allowing
construcive work to be done with minimal headaches.

Others should feel free to correct if I'm way off base
anywhere here.

Robert