Complete newbie with big aspirations

[Ciccio]

hey guys, I currently have

1 x debian linux box
1 x Win2k laptop
5 x Win2k workstations

What I want to do is keep the win2k laptop as is for email, and micoshaft apps, keep one win2k desktop for games and such like and turn the rest into linux boxes. I also want to have a fileserver so I download to a single place, rather than having /download areas on each machine. I want this place to be accessable from both W2k and Linux.

Can I have a ISDN dialup box under Linux? Also do I need a DNS type server running somewhere, If I put small HDD's on the Linux boxes can I have one machine as a file server?

Currently my W2k dialup machine shares the internet connection and all my other machines pick up an IP address except for the linux box which has a static IP.

[MechCD]

Check out the howto files, there is a HOWTO on net sharing with dialup.

yes one can be a fileserver. Linux support Windows filesharing (a lil hard to set up though)

I'm rather confused. your WIN2k box hands out Ip addys??? Why!???! Wouldn't it be easier to have static ones? Maybe i'm just unsmert

Linux can be set for dynamic IPs check you network settings. For me, it was set up to have a dynamic IP from the install.

I recommend leaving the net sharing on the win2k server

[Ciccio]

It hands out IP Addys as it needs to for the ICS to work. It sets the IP to 192.168.0.1 of the dialup machine, then hands addys out to everything else.

I just left it like that as it works.

Thanks for the tip Mech - I'll read the how-tos

[MechCD]

Ok, I've never used ICS, my bad. I'm thinking of proxies, not actual sharing. With proxies, its much easier to have staic IPs, but with actual sharing, dynamic IPs are easier.

If ya need more help, just ask us(dnar) here :D

[MaTriX]

If I had so many machines, I would do just like this:

The Laptop for business apps (I have a 800 MHz W2K Laptop and that's what I use it for...)

The most powerful desktop for fun stuff : gaming, multimedia, etc... (That's my 1.35 GHz AMD on W2K too)

I don't need a routing machine because I'm connected on a Linksys but if I had to, I would setup my third best machine as a Linux router/firewall/file server/web server/ftp server/mail server...

Using a Linux box as a Router is much more powerful than ICS, it enable to assign static routes to specific computers, opening a door to many services that just won't work with ICS...

I configured the file server on the Linux box in minutes (I'm 100% Linux newbie), all my W machines could access the files with no problem.

[wbierman]

FYI

ICS stands for Internet Connection Sharing. Some folks only receive a dynamic IP address from their ISP. A machine with ICS "shares" this single connection with other machines on the Windows network. That machine becomes the gateway and is set to act as a DHCP server for the rest of the network. This connection could be a dial-up, ISDN, and even cable or DSL running something called PPOE or Point to Point Over Ethernet.