Best way to share cable modem connection??

[Energenie]

Just curious whats the best way to share cable modem connection? Right now I'm using 2 nics in the computer that has the cable modem hooked up to it and Internet Gate. I do have some extra computers that I could use as A router but not sure how to set it up. Would A Hardware router be better? How do these work with online games etc.?

 

[EXplicitContent]

Hi Energenie,
Save your money, if you have the hardware already. I have an old amd233, 1gb hd, setup as a router/printserver only. I'm using Freesco and the new Mandrake Single Network Firewall.

Freesco, will run off a floppy and a 486, but i made a 64 mb dos primary partition with dos system files, and installed it there. Freesco ,surprisingly, has to run on the primary dos partition, c drive..Then install neat things like iptraf, opensshd.The rest of the hd is an extended linux partition for mandrake.

FreeSCO

Mandrake

Security Scan

The mandrake router is stealth, Freesco isn't, just closed. So I use freesco for gaming and mandrake for everything else.

By no means am I a nerd/guru. I just kept seaching the forums when I was having a problem. Freesco wouldn't recognize my isa nic when the pci was installed during installation. Had to pull the pci during intial boot and setup and specify the irq and i/o.. BTW, mandrake's forum sucks. Go with freesco first, then work on mandrake.
OR .............NO...NO...DON'T give up and go buy a router!!!!

Good Luck,

 

[Chupa]

Well, I had the same question, but I need a system that will run in Windows. I'm setting it up for my parents, and if I do it in Linux there's no way they will be able to work with it if something goes wrong. The computers aren't networked now, so I will have to buy a hub. How much more expensive is a router than a hub? I think a harware solution would be ideal because there's no chance of my mom accidentally disabling it or something like that, but if it is too expensive, we can just go with software. Which then begs the other question, what is the best proxy software, and/or is there any good free software for Win?

 

[EXplicitContent]

Chupa,
You would have to set it up dedicated. Dig that old PC out of the closet.
FreeSCO will run on a 486/16mb ram, 2 nics and a floppy drive, no harddrive, no cdrom. You set a good password and nobody can mess with it. Once setup, it's rock solid and maint. free. Show Mom the halt/reboot command if she doesn't want to leave it running. One dude has been up continuous for 146 days. He went down because of a power outage but came right back online. It has a built-in firewall/NAT server. There's never been a documented case of an intruder.

No windows BSOD, no defrag, no IE security holes. Oh, and windows barely runs on anything less than 233.

I had Freesco running for 2 months before the upgrade bug hit and I decided to try something more elaborate and installed to the hard drive. Boot is about 15 seconds.

BTW, You can buy a hub for about 10 bucks.

 

[JackMDS]

If you are looking for more ?humble solution?.

Read This:

The Basic Options to Share Internet Connection (Internet Sharing 101).

And This:

Hub, Switch, Router, DHCP, LAN, WAN, NAT, etc

Comparing Routers Here:

Comparing Cable/DSL Routers.

 

[vash]

I always go with the hardware router versus a software one. A router is smaller, potentially quieter and is specifically designed to share the connection. Software routers are easy to use, update and get going, but I don't like having yet another computer in my computer room just to share my net connection. Routers aren't too difficult to setup with most having web menus, so you may want to at least think about it.

vash

 

[Wik]

My Freesco box is silent, no fans in it. Rock solid. No Linux knowledge is needed. I run mine on a HD as my web page is hosted on it, RC5 is cracked on it, and much more. My uptimes page shows that it has been on for 62 days since the last reboot. Uptime

BTW Freesco has a web config page also

 

[Energenie]

Well I downloaded Freesco and ran the make_fd.bat to put the files on a formatted floppy, but when I start any one of the 3 machines I've got up right now it goes through the loading ram disk... and starts to go through loading kernal... but I don't think it makes it through the loading of the kernal because then it says "Boot failed please change disk and press any key to continue". Any ideas anyone?? Also tried running the safe_fd.bat to the freesco floppy but it just hangs, and doesn't write anthing to the floppy.

 

[Wik]

Format a different floppy and try it

 

[Energenie]

Hey thanks Wik, that did the trick

 

[Energenie]

Well got the hardware set up for the router, A 486 with 32mb ram, problem is I've got two NICS that are ISA and I've disabled the PnP and assigned I/O and IRQ's but when I put those same numbers into Freesco it doesn't find any NICs, think it might be a driver problem. The cards are a Netgear model EA201C and A LinkSYS Ether 16 Lan card. What drivers should I have loaded on the floppy for these two cards? Do have all the driver disk for the cards. Planned on running it off the floppy if room for all the drivers, but if not do have a spare HD that I can use. TIA