I've long
known that Linux can be configured to do just about anything
relating to networks and the Internet. All the major UNIX-like
OS's such as BSD and Linux can be set up as effective, secure
broadband gateways. The trouble is, I have difficulty setting
up X-Window after installing Linux on a freshly formatted hard
drive.
I then
heard about several free mini-distributions of Linux which
fit the OS, router and firewall software on one 1.44 Mb 3
1/2" floppy disk.
These
Lean-Linux distros run surprising well on a 386 or 486 with
8mb of RAM. I looked at several of these router packages and
finally settled on Freesco because of its simplicity and ease
of setup.
A Freesco
box will allow two or more computers to share an Internet
connection which has been assigned only one
IP address.
What's
in Freesco?
Freesco
is based on the older but stable 2.0.38 Linux kernel. The
kernel has been purposely pared down to provide basic network
and IP routing duties. Many of the non-network related funtions
have been removed. Freesco has a
NAT
router which handles the
LAN traffic from one or more
IP addresses and acts as a gateway to the Internet. With this,
two or more computers may share one Internet connection.
A secure firewall is included. A firewall will stop unauthorised
access from the Internet to the LAN. This will greatly reduce
the chance of attacks by malicious hackers. Anyone with a
direct, broadband Internet connection such as DSL or cable
should have some form of firewall installed.
Freesco
also includes on the floppy disk, the code for a print server
and a
DHCP server for the internal network.
Freesco offers
a good foundation for building a larger, more powerful server.
Other packages such as web servers and proxy servers may be
added. This will however, add more complexity to the system
and will require a hard drive to store the extra files. The
Freesco Web ring has several sites with extra packages to
add to Freesco.
Internet
connections can be made with DSL, cable or dial-up modems.
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