Linux to control my home network?

[rednek]

Hi

I've dabbled a little with Fedora and with Puppy, but now I'm looking to take things a little further. I have an old (pentiumII) machine and I'm wondering if I could employ it to control my home network, in particular to act as a proxy server through which all the computers in my home (LAN and WLAN) connect to the outside world.

Firstly is a PII up to the job? Secondly can I configure it to monitor incoming traffic for viruses, and to log pages visited, etc?

Can it be configured to work with the wireless PCs I have in the home?

The kit I have is as follows:
The PII as mentioned above
5 x P4s and Dual cores in various bedrooms offices studies, etc mainly running XPSP3
An old celeron 1.7 laptop running Puppy
A 10/100 switch
A BT Voyager hub / wireless modem

Question is, really, can I connect all this together to access internet through 1 proxy, and will that proxy be capable of caching freq used web pages, and also handling antivirus tasks and firewalling, so as I don't have to have AV stuff running on the individual machines? (3 of my machines are in a recording studio type environment, and the music software can get funny about having AV stuff running in the background).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Kind Regards

[Rubberman]

I take it that the BT Voyager is your wireless access point? Does it also have router capabilities? How are you connected to the Internet now?

[rednek]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
The BTVoyager is indeed the wireless access point. I use a reserve IP list on its web interface to give the local ip addresses for the wired and wireless machines. 4 of my XP machines are in the same room as the BTVoyager, so I use the netgear 10/100 switch to connect these to the BTVoyager. The machines in the rest of the house connect wirelessly. Each machine has its own connection to the internet via the router, and each machine also has its own antivirus program (Avast).

Does it have routing capabilities? I guess so - I can use it as a firewall, set up specific ip addresses, allow / disallow internet access for specific MACs on the network.

[Rubberman]

Hi, thanks for the reply.
The BTVoyager is indeed the wireless access point. I use a reserve IP list on its web interface to give the local ip addresses for the wired and wireless machines. 4 of my XP machines are in the same room as the BTVoyager, so I use the netgear 10/100 switch to connect these to the BTVoyager. The machines in the rest of the house connect wirelessly. Each machine has its own connection to the internet via the router, and each machine also has its own antivirus program (Avast).

Does it have routing capabilities? I guess so - I can use it as a firewall, set up specific ip addresses, allow / disallow internet access for specific MACs on the network.

Ok. Please explain how you want your Linux system to "control" your local network? The router does manage your systems' access to the internet and performs firewall duties. Because it is designed specifically for that, it probably does a better job than you will do with a separate box. Typically, people will use a Linux host as a router/firewall for a network if it is directly attached to the Internet. In such a case, they typically have two ethernet ports - one attached to the broadband modem/Internet, the other to a local ethernet hub/switch. The system then performs routing and firewall duties as does your BTVoyager now.

[rednek]

What I'd hoped is that the linux box could host antivirus software so that I wouldn't have to run AV on my studio and office machines, ie, have the linux box effectively screen all traffic into the home. I was also wondering if the linux box could also host some groupware software, to enable us as a family to all have access to a central calendar - but I realise I'm probably opening another can of worms there(no pun intended)!

[Rubberman]

What I'd hoped is that the linux box could host antivirus software so that I wouldn't have to run AV on my studio and office machines, ie, have the linux box effectively screen all traffic into the home. I was also wondering if the linux box could also host some groupware software, to enable us as a family to all have access to a central calendar - but I realise I'm probably opening another can of worms there(no pun intended)!

Ah! Clarification as to intended use is good. It keeps you from getting answers to questions you haven't asked...

Yes, you could use it as an anti-virus appliance, but you'd have to make sure that all data passes thru the box before hitting the internet. This kind of means you're going to need a dual ethernet port setup and configure the linux box to forward packets after scanning them. Not an exercise for the newb or faint-of-heart!

As for groupware, that is an easier task to accomplish, and it should deal with those chores just fine, even if it isn't routing or virus scanning. You just need to determine what applications you want to use. There are servers that provide MS Outlook type of services (calendar, schedule, email, etc). You need to research them somewhat to determine what you'd like to try. Just remember, Google is your friend!

[rednek]

Again, many thanks for the response. I will do some further research regarding a dual ethernet set-up. I'm quite happy to get my hands dirty, and not having to have AV software installed, particularly on my studio machines, will be a good goal for me to work to.

Can I just install another network card in the linux box - or does it need to be specifically a dual network card?
R

[Rubberman]

Again, many thanks for the response. I will do some further research regarding a dual ethernet set-up. I'm quite happy to get my hands dirty, and not having to have AV software installed, particularly on my studio machines, will be a good goal for me to work to.

Can I just install another network card in the linux box - or does it need to be specifically a dual network card?
R

You should be able to install another enet card and use that in addition to the current one, built-in or not.

[rednek]

Thank you for your time.
Regards
Red

[Rubberman]

One connection will link to the Internet (probably directly to your modem), and the other to a switch or wireless access point that the other computers connect with. If you have a router/access-point/switch already, such as a Linksys device, then you can configure them to be a hub instead of a router, and turn off its dhcp hosting services since your server will be providing those capabilities.