[CentOS] Networking setup/help

Wed May 19 14:30:08 UTC 2010
Kwan Lowe <kwan.lowe at gmail.com>

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:42 AM,  <tdukes at sc.rr.com> wrote:
> I had to install 5.5 from scratch and now I have to rebuild my home networking system.
>
> I haven't had to mess with this stuff in over 5+ years and I'm sure there may be better ways of doing it now.
>
> My liunx box acts as firewall/gateway for 2 other pcs. I was using a script from the Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO with ddclient (since I have a dynamic ip).
>

Though there are many benefits to running gateway services through a
Linux system, for the past couple years I've opted for an inexpensive
wireless router that has been properly secured. It came down to power
utilization as the Linux machine used about 10 times as much power as
the dedicated router.

As to benefits, I do run a Squid proxy server on my network. My
internet connection is not the fastest and I've seen pretty good cache
hit percentage (hovering near 30%-50%).

> Also, I don't think I need a full name server. Can I get by with a caching nameserver?

Yes, certainly.  However, there are some benefits to running a full
nameserver especially if you have any wireless devices that may need
to use printers, file servers, etc.. For example, I can connect a
wireless laptop and print to HPLaser1 or access the fileshare as
\\fileserver\. When I change the fileserver it's a simple matter of
pointing my alias over to the new server.