Hey this isn't a problem more advice that im looking for so id apreciate it if people who have done this before would write a reply as there expirance is what im after, so please dont just say buy a router. The story is im a student and moving out of the nest to make my way in the big world.So im sharing a flat with freinds and a adls conection is first on the agenda. Me being a computing student and having access to tonnes of computer parts have decided to make a sort of gateway server with the conection to the adsl runing through it. i would also like a firewall, printserver, some way of limmiting the band width to people and maby a proxy server. oh and some way of backing up files from other computers. ive decided to use linux due to it security,the fact that sticky fingers wont be able to use it and im hungry to use other os besides the Win. Oh and the freeware is a bouns. So the question is what adsl modems do you sudjest to use and have the drivers well suported,what software will allow me to achive all this that is freeware?(baring in mind the other computers that access it will be win xp) there will be a netgear swith as well that will connect the compuers together. will there be any problem with machines talking to each other and how do i get round that and also will there be any hardware issues that i need to think about.

If you just want an easy to use firewall router, check out ipcop or smoothwall. Check their hardware pages for NIC's that are compatible. www.ipcop.org www.smoothwall.org If you want all that in one box, probably best to use a distro like mandrake or fedora, and use fwbuilder to make it a firewall, too. www.fwbuilder.org MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

IMHO, is much easier to build a firewall using FreeBSD. FreeBSD doesn't require a modern PC for running it. In fact, I'm using the latest stable release of FreeBSD as server OS on a 486 (100MHz, 48 RAM MB, 1 GB HD). It runs fine (much faster than both older and latest releases of Slackware Linux and Red Hat Linux). Firewalls http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls.html If you don't know what FreeBSD is, go to http://www.freebsd.org/ There is also a message board for FreeBSD (Unix) on Computing.Net at http://www.computing.net/unix/wwwboard/wwwboard.html I suggest you using a router connected to a PC (the firewall) with two NICs; one cable has to connect the router with this (firewall) PC, the other one is for connecting this (firewall) PC with a hub, where the other computers are plugged in through their cables and NICs. Note: it doesn't matter which OS you use for building your firewall. n0dez

Not to slam FreeBSD, but check out the distros I mentioned if you're looking for an easy to setup and administer firewall. It doesn't get any easier than ipcop or smoothwall. It's like admining Netgear firewall! You don't have to know anything about linux even to get it going. It also doesn't require a modern system. I'm running it on a Celeron 450MHz with 512M of ram (ram utilization is 128M, but that's with SNORT and a web caching proxy running on it). Granted, your hardware is older, but both our hardware is pretty much junk. ;-) Consider it admins through a web interface as well. Very convenient. But those aren't geared to do anything else but routing and firewall kinds of things. MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

Go for an ADSL router with an RJ45 interface rather than just USB, then you should be able to just plug it into your switch. Most distros will provide you with what you want out of the box. IPTables for the firewall, cups for a print server, squid for a proxy and samba for windoze network intergration.

like heropsycho said if you are looking for stong / easy firewall & router use SMOOTHWALL i have my 4 pc & 2 WAP runing behind it ! worry free :-) .. my setup is AMD 333mhz 384Ram 10g hd ! now with $30 hardware i get more protection & easy to use then any other firewall/router ! but if you want easy way out in these days you can buy any netgear or linksys firewall router for $40 to $60 if you add another $20 you can buy wireless router / firewall. -QuIk Abit NF7-S 2.0 Mobile 2500+ @ 2.5.3ghz 40c Idel 66c Full Load! Blitz PC3500 2x512 Ram SATA 74GB HD WD Raptor XFX FX5700 Ultra 256 Video Card ! ( Dual Monitor 2 LCD ) ! 500watt Super x A