Current Issue


Table of contents

CD-ROM

Sys Admin and The Perl Journal CD-ROM version 12.0

Version 12.0 delivers every issue of Sys Admin from 1992 through 2006 and every
issue of The Perl Journal from 1996-2002 in one convenient CD-ROM!

Order now!

Sys Admin Magazine > Archives > 1997 > 9701

Connecting LAN Users to the Internet Using Linux and IP Masquerade

Charles C. Bundy


Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Sidebar 1


Connecting the users on your office/home LAN and to the Internet need not be an expensive proposition. You can manage it without IP address registration or Domain Name Service fees - all you need is a standard PPP account from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). At our site at the Virginia Department of Transporation (VDOT), we pay $85 a month for unlimited PPP access and 10 email accounts. The services provided on user computers are POP email, WWW browsing, and telnet. The number of client connections is limited only by the bandwidth provided by your modem. This article describes the VDOT system and provides tools for monitoring and managing the system.

A key component of the setup is a gateway machine running Linux v1.2.13 with a patched kernel that allows IP masquerade. IP masquerade is a way of aliasing IP addresses from one subnet range to a single IP address (the one that is assigned when you connect via PPP to the Internet). This aliasing is necessary because the routing information on the Internet side of the link leads back only to the ISP, and thus to the PPP interface on Linux, rather than to your LAN. The Linux gateway exchanges the PPP interface IP to your client's IP address and ships the packet out to the Ethernet interface. Figure 1 shows an idealized layout of the LAN <-> Internet connection for my site.




MarketPlace

Instant Answers to Your IT & Business Questions
Sign Up & Get Full Access To The Definitive Online Book Collection With SkillSoft's Books24x7�.

Build IT Knowledge with Current & Trusted Content
Helps Employees Develop & Hone New Technical Programming Skills. Sign Up & Get Full Access.

BugSplat - Automatic Crash Analysis
Fast online exception analysis. Capture customer crash data online.

Discover WinDev 11 RAD
and develop 10 times faster ! ALM, IDE, .Net, PDF, 5GL, Database, 64-bit, etc. Free Express version

Wanna see your ad here?