Linux Router Project

[KAknight]

www.linuxrouter.org (http://www.linuxrouter.org)
I am getting a cable modem rather shortly, was researching for a good firewall/router when I came across this. I don't totally comprehend it yet, but this is my take on it. Basically it is an unbreakable firewall. It is a scaled down version of linux that can fit on a floppy. In that copy of linux, a firewall was written. You stick this floppy into a 486 or a pentium 75 and move the write protect tab on the floppy. Then you remove the computer's hard drive. Linux then creates a RAM drive and runs its firewall/router off it. Since there is not hard drive, a hacker couldn't write to anything. Am I correct in my assesment? I think I have the basics, but if I am wrong, please let me know.

[Chief]

Well, I am not a linux expert, but, I think You are close with your assessement. You might also want to take a look at www.smoothwall.org. (http://www.smoothwall.org.) A little linux progie (20 megs). I have it running on a pint 130 and a 130meg harddrive, no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached. It is a router, firewall and my internet connection point for my little lan. This proggie, among other things gives you a log when someone tries to hack your system. It allows me to get on internet
with all my other boxes at same time (modem is only attached to it)but it is slow because all I have is a 56k connection. It does a lot more but I wont go on. Hope this give you some food for thought.

[smokin1]

I use a router similar to that as well called Freesco. It can run on a floppy, but I have it on a small HD in a 486. Shares my cable connection, does NAT, DHCP..and transparent..even spoofs IP's so you can run ICQ with no additional configuration.
www.freesco.org (http://www.freesco.org)

I have a write up on how to configure for cable. If you care to read it, I'll send a link.
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Savant]

I use IP masqurade on a normal linux system for my cable, its a pent 233, but I also run SMTP POP3 and Apache servers on it. setting it up will be vary from distro to distro a bit, but for slackware 7 you merely uncomment the lines about masquerade at the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc.modules then add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
ipchains -P forward DENY
ipchains -A forward -j MASQ -s 192.168.1.0/24 -d 0.0.0.0/0
where 192.168.1.x is the local IP's you use.
that in itself is a firewall of sorts, it denys service to all machines outside the local address range.
on a side note I noticed a major improvement when I switched from ISA NE2000 cards to PCI Etherlink XL's

[This message has been edited by Savant (edited 05-10-2001).]