by [Followups to this post will go to comp.os.os2.networking.tcp-ip and
comp.os.linux.misc]
I'm checking into how the company I work for can get a live connection
to the Internet, and need some guidance. We're running on a Novell
3.11/4.x network with Mac, DOS/Windows, and OS/2 clients. We want to
provide Internet access for our users for email (probably gatewayed
through cc:Mail), Mosaic, gopher, telnet, ftp, Usenet news, and other
services. We are probably going to use a dedicated dial-up service
(28.8K modems) via SLIP or PPP for now, with plans to move to
higher-bandwidth connections as demand increases.
Our plan now is to have both TCP/IP and IPX running on our network,
with a computer acting as a local Internet node on the network. This
computer would be connected via dial-up or leased line to our Internet
provider.
I'm trying to figure out how we can use this computer to be both a
gateway (with some security) and a local repository for Usenet
newsgroups, possible external ftp/telnet access, etc. We would be
running on our own domain (xyz.com), so I guess we'd allocate IP
addresses within our organization. We want to be able to restrict
access to our network, such as only allowing in traffic for certain
addresses, or only at certain hours of the day or certain days of the
week. This traffic wouldn't have the address of the gateway, but of a
client machine on the network.
However, there would be traffic for the gateway machine as well
(ftp/telnet/finger/UUCP-transer/other traffic). Originating from our
network we would have outgoing traffic intended for other machines on
the Internet that would have to pass through the gateway, but we might
want to be able to limit that traffic as well to conserve the
bandwidth we have.
What kind of software would we have to get to be able to do this? Is
it available for OS/2 or Linux? Which platform is going to be easier
to set-up and more capable of doing these various tasks? Can you
recommend some books or on-line resources (ftp, telnet, newsgroups,
etc) that I can use to learn how these types of things are done (I've
got Linux running via SLIP, so I'm not completely helpless about some
of these things).
I appreciate your time and help in getting this set up. Hopefully my
company will let me use the connection to provide some services to the
Internet when we do get it running.
Thanks.
Pete Kruckenberg