kepo-ing Zz85

As the title says, I spent a day or 2, to figure out how to turn my feather linux p2 300mhz server pc into a home lan extender or router.

Here’s the situation,
my longest utp 5c cable is not long enough to reach to the my brother’s pc which is the furthest away,
the wireless 802.11b that is used with a usb adaptor is slow (11mbps) plus weak signal,
and the netgear router that I’m using ran out of ports.

Here’s a little (ASCII) network topology that I have

Gateway to Internet via ADSL PPPoA
| — My network printer
| /
Router — My Server *** My Brother’sPC
| \
| —– My Parents’ PC
My Main PC

Steps.
1. Bought a PCI NIC (Network Interface Card) -I got prolink’s for $12
2. Buy a UTP Crossover wire (Needed for Pc-Pc)
3. Unscrew and Install card - I upgrade my ram to 128mb as well
4. Detect hardware
5. Decide design
6. Configure
7. Test and use!

More details

4. Use lspci and dmesg to detect card. In my case its a realtek ethernet chipset. Use modprobe to load module for it. “modprobe 8139too”. Up the interface “ipconfig eth1 up”

5. Came up with few ideas of method to implement
A) Turn the server into a bridge (Layer 2 Filtering)
B) Firewall based configuration (iptables)
C) Turn it like a real router (Use Zebra to enable RIP, and Cisco like IOS)
D) Make it least complex as long it works!

D worked for me at least

6. Implementing is the most frustration when things don’t work up. Make me doubt my networking education and my skills as a CCNA (CISCO Certified Network Associate)

Somehow it as simple like this.

a. calculate network addresses. new subnet mask required.
b. add alias for eth1 to 8139too /etc/alias
c. configure interface /etc/network/interface
d. plus enable ip forwarding echo 1>/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
e. configure pc’s network settings
f. configure router (add static route)

7.
Try ping ip addresses.
Run tcpdump to debug problems
Try ping web addresses
Start using internet application and transfer files from 1 pc to another
Configure DHCP

Done and Ah the satisifaction!