[Gllug] How to access the internet

[Bruce Richardson]

On  9 Feb, Raju wrote:
> {My fingers shake as I type my first ever message to Linux group.}
> 
> I think the idea is to have a proxy-server sit on your lan connected to the
> internet. That way everyone on LAN talks only to the proxy and only the
> proxy talks to internet.

There's no need for a proxy or ipchains or anything complex.  Simply
set your LAN's router as the gateway. To do this with immediate effect
type

  route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address of your router.  Any ip packets
whose destination can't be found locally will be sent through the
gateway.

To make this a permanent change the method depends on your distribution:

Red Hat: 1. Use Linuxconf or 
         2. edit /etc/sysconfig/network and then, if you haven't
         already added the route directly, do /etc/rc.d/init.d/network
         restart


SuSE: Use Yast 

Slackware: Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet2 and then telinit 1 followed by
telinit 3 or just type the "route add" line above.

Proxy servers are for caching and serving up web pages locally to
increase the apparent speed of your connection.  They also do routing
but you don't need them just for routing.

ipchains is used for diy fire-walls, packet-filtering, bridging
(connecting two separate networks as one) and ip-masquerading.  If you
use a Linux box as a router then it's useful on that but you don't need
it on the workstations.

-- 

Bruce

"Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses" 
- Richard P. Gabriel