Re: Intranet

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Seth Reinosa wrote:

> My church is building an intranet (Lord willing). We are going to have
> @ 5 macs with localtalk and the localtalk server connected to a PC
> runnning linux. Can I have the Linux beast connected directly to the
> Mac toy with a single rj45 cable or do I need a hub. (I know about the
> ethernet cards)

are the rest of the macs on ethernet or localtalk?

if on ethernet, then you'll need a hub.  8 port hubs aren't too expensive
these days.  here in australia you can buy them new for about $130.  cheaper
second hand.  You'll probably be able to find them much cheaper than that in
the US.

if on localtalk then a single twisted pair cable (with Rx & Tx wires
crossed over) can be used between the linux box and the appletalk
server. You will, however, need IP routing software on the appletalk
server. I'm not sure if MacTCP or Open Transport will do it (it's been a
while since i did any major work with macs & ip).

Another option is to forget about ethernet and just use Localtalk all
the way. There are localtalk cards for PCs and some of them have Linux
drivers available. Somebody posted here in debian-user a week or so ago
saying that they worked for a company which sold parallel port localtalk
cards and that a linux driver was nearly ready. I think the price was
around $US100.


> I also want to have one modem connected to the Linux beast so the
> others can acces the web through the Linux beast. I would also like to
> know if I really need any other software.

should be no problem. Probably the easiest way would be to use a private
class C (e.g. 192.168.1.x) for your internal network, and use ip
masquerading on the linux box to provide internet connectivity to the
rest of the machines (this also protects your appletalk server...since
it's ip address is on the private network, there can be no direct access
to it. any/all access must be explicitly enabled with masquerading
rules).

Network could look something like:

   dialup internet
     connection
        /
       /
      /                   +------localtalk network---------+
     /                    |
    LINUX         atalk-srvr
      |                 |
      +---ethernet------+

For more details, See the Linux IP masquerading web page at:
     http://www.wwonline.com/~achau/ipmasq/

Lots of good stuff there.

This will work whether you have a static IP address or one which is
dynamically allocated by your service provider. However, if you want to
host web pages for the internet to see on your linux box, you will need
a static IP address.

also, use Squid as your web proxy/cache. Squid really saves bandwidth
and speeds up repeat accesses to the same pages.

You've got a fair bit to learn, but it's all really straightforward and
easy.  just take it one step at a time.

You can use netatalk to make Linux act as an appletalk file/print server
too. However, remember that the linux box will be live on the net - so
dont put sensitive files on it. It would be safe, however, to set it up
so that user home directories/web pages etc and the web document root
directory can be mounted onto the Macs.

> We are running on broken shoe strings and we need to prepare the youth
> of today for the technologies of tommorrow.


> Thanx
> and may God Bless you

Goddess bless

:-)



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