Re: [OT] Recommended Router Hardware

[David Brodbeck <brodbd@u.washington.edu>]

On Aug 6, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Andrei Popescu wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 08:45:21AM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>
> > > Well - it isn't that old. It is a Compaq Desktop EN, Pentium III  
> > > with about
> > > 500MB RAM. But there is only one Ethernet-Connection which - I  
> > > guess - can
> > > be solved by using a Hub or Switch, isn't it?
> >
> > no. to use a desktop machine as a router, you need two network
> > connections: one for the local network to attach to and one for the
> > internet at large. The computer then routes packets appropriately and
>
> I've read somewhere that it can be done with one card, but it's very
> difficult to setup.

You can do it, by creating multiple IP aliases on the one adapter.   
There are some caveats, though.  For example, this likely won't work  
very well if you plan to do DHCP on your local network.  Other  
protocols that use IP broadcasts can also get confused or get into  
trouble.  Other than that, it isn't necessarily *harder* to set up,  
but it's more *confusing* to set up, if that makes sense.