PC Router project. Newbie in distress.

[markenk]

Hello everyone. I'm starting off with a disclaimer.
I'm a second year IT student and fairly new to linux. Don't really know my way around command line and linux system. Perhaps i should have posted my question to linux router/firewall thread, but i could not really make sense of what was written there.

I have a need for an extremely low budget router/switch to share an internet connection between my desktop computer and my neighbours laptop. I have planned an old PC for this, that no one wants anymore. It has 3 NIC's. One for incoming cable (PCI), one for cable out [ISA (for my desktop)] and a wireless card (PCI).

I'm really stumped here and i don't know where to start. I have heard about a Linux Router Project, which sadly now is abandoned. I tried to search for a download, but failed. It seems a perfect solution to me, for it would not need a HDD and therefore would be relatively silent. The router should reside in my bedroom.

If anyone out there would be willing to tutor me through this project, I, well... i can't give any material reward, but you would have my deepest gratitude.

Yours Truly!
Jakob

[Kieren]

There are some distributions such as Smoothwall that you may find usefull

I have however set up a server like this (apart from with wireless) using a standard installation of Ubuntu and an application called Firestarter. Firestarter is just a firewall with a clean GUI so it is quite easy to set up

I have also configured my set up to stop my housemates from downloading torrents all night as this has seemed to be a big problem in student houses and left the internet next to unusable constantly

[Brain_Dead]

When you say router/switch I am a little confused because these are two vary different networking devices. If you only need a switch you should easily be able to find a script using 'iptables' that might only be a couple of lines long that could give you the capabilities of a switch. Then if you decide you want to have something more like a router you will have a script you can easily add stuff to for more functionality like a router.

[Brain_Dead]

Yeah but that will just set it up to forward packets like a switch. That really doesn't give you the capabilities of a router. For more capabilities like a router you will need to do some iptables commands