mleo2003 wrote:
> I'm setting up a trio of old computers in my house to act as internal
> servers for various purposes, and was wondering what advice some of the
> veteran people here could give me. So far, here's how I want it to end
> up:
>
> Using the 192.168.0.0/24 Range
>
> Box 1
> 192.168.0.1
> Being as how neither the telephone company nor cable company have
> penetrated this far into the woods with newer technology yet, I am
> still using dial up, so this box has ppp0 as it's external interface
> and eth0 as it's internal interface. It serves as my gateway/firewall,
> as well as serving DHCP/DNS. I've been reading several articles about
> DHCP and iptables, and have it worked out and going, as well as the
> gateway, but I'm not too sure if my firewall is setup quite right, and
> I know I have nothing done as of yet with DNS. I think I want a simple
> caching DNS server, but I do want the ability to assign the 3 servers I
> want to run names.
>
> Box 2
> 192.168.0.2
> This box, I want to be my internal web/ftp/database server, so I can
> play with making web pages in a near live system. I am a Web Dev Major,
> so I can set most of that up just fine, just need some help figuring
> out if, one day, I want to make it world accessible, how to get Box 1
> to forward web/ftp requests to Box 2.
>
> Box 3
> 192.168.0.3
> This will be my favorite box. I want to use it mainly for app
> development, and the app I want to develop is a MUD. Yes, I still
> mud, and the mud I normally play on has recently lost it's main coder.
> Being friends with the owner, he jokingly told me to "quit playing,
> learn C, and start working on the mud". Well, I decided that sounded
> like fun, so I want to setup my own MUD on this box to learn the basics
> of how it runs, how it all connects, etc... Again, setting this up will
> pretty much be all me, but if I ever want it world accessible, can I
> make Box 1 forward requests on the port it will use to Box 3.
>
> So mainly, I need help with setting up Box 1, and making sure it can
> send the appropriate stuff to Box 2 & 3, although any and all help
> regarding any part of my setup will be greatly appreciated. I may one
> day add in a mythTV server to the mix to record stuff for me, if I can
> find another box and get the right components for it. Thank you in
> advance for any and all help.

You might want to leave 192.168.0.1 unused. Any network device (e.g.
router, print server, ...) you might buy in future years will probably
be preconfigured there. A lot of these wonders use HTML based
configuration that requires you to connect to it from a web browser.
It will be easier to access and reconfigure the new device if you don't
have a device on the default IP it uses out of the box.

Even if you use fixed IPs and hosts files to assign names, you may want
to set up a DHCP server that will allow visiting laptops, etc to
connect to your network without tinkering.