suggestions for small home network

[ommy]

Hello Everyone
Here I am, finally done with setting up a small home network. I guess it s time for me now to finally experiment with my passion (thats supposed to be network security). Let me explain my network setup first.

1) I have a Celeron 1.7 box with a cable connection(though only 64 Kbps , I am happy with it). The primary OS at this machine is Windows XP Professional. This is a dual homed machine. One network card is attatched to the cable modem and the other network card to an 8 port d-link switch.
2) An 8 port 10/100 Mbps D-link switch(only 2 network sickets occupied, both by UTP CAT 5 cables)
3) A dual processor xeon machine( two processor Pentium -II 450 Mhz each),256 MB RAM I have dual booted it with Windows XP professional and Red Hat 8.0 distro(it installed the SMP kernel version too....wowwwww..and it flows so smoothly like a river)

This was my network setup. Though I am planning t oge thold of a Pentium - 1 or even a 80 386 machine for making it a router or a gateway and a firewall. I have read some real good How-To's for small Linux and MU Linux. Cyotye is cool too. And I am dying to get hold of an old dying machine, so that I could get my hands dirty with these OS's as well. Can anyone refer me to some website, frm where i can get an old machine by just paying for the postage expenses.

Okie, now any suggestions from the GURUS, that from where should I start on network security. I know there are whole loads of some already posted questions, but i am still asking for a better advice (since the whole network setup , has been explained) . What I am thinking of is to start off a basic authentication stuff. I am thinking that is there a way that this XP machine (the internet gateway) can be authenticated through the other Red Hat machine? Is there a possible way to do this??
Furthermore, any suggestions/advices would be helpful which could add up to my learning.
I am planning to shift it to some BSD versions as well, until i get comfortable with this red hat machine.

Thank you for reading all the stuff
Ommy

[VictorKaum]

Ommy for your firewall / gateway on a linux distro, you can easily run such distro's from one single 3"5 inch diskette. Google for "router on a floppy" or similar.
About authentication, running such from a BSD machine will definitly bring you a lot of knowledge about *nix and networking.

[ommy]

ummm...I would like to add something further...can anyone recommend me that how can i see the traffic passing through my gateway(that is dual homed), i know by means of a sniffer or by putting the network card in promocious mode. Can someone elaborate this further. This would be a real intresting experiment. How could i put the network card in promocious mode?? how can i sniff the the traffic passing through my gateway?
Thank you
I hope no one is thinking that this is a social engineering trick..
any further informatiion to ensure you people that this is my own home network can be provided, if required.
Thank you

[VictorKaum]

A simple way to analyse your traffic is to run ethereal or tcpdump on one of your network nodes.

For the firewall / bridge, this probably helps? http://www.linux.com/howtos/Bridge+F...DSL.shtml#toc4

[ommy]

hey victor kaum ...you are quick..let me gooogle these terms..
besides this is my 100th post...
clap clap

[The Grunt]

for your router machine, if you can get ahold of a cd drive, you might want to try out IPCop . I have been playing around with it and it can do everything you want, but you will have to learn how to configure and run SNORT (an IDS, the best one out IMO).

[Highlander]

Personally I would use a basic Linksys Router...
Never had a problem and now under $50
and using NAT, security is usually not a problem.

[ss2chef]

Try Smoothwall..

www.smoothwall.org

It's free, can run on most garbage hardware with 2 network interfaces (dialup, ethernet, or whatever), and is only ~ 50 meg to download in ISO format.

It has a basic firewall and IDS provision with a few other nice features thrown in.

[The Grunt]

Originally posted here by Highlander
Personally I would use a basic Linksys Router...
Never had a problem and now under $50
and using NAT, security is usually not a problem.

Thing is, you can usually find an old PI or PII for free, and pay 10 bucks for used network card, IPCop is free, smoothwall is free, and its an AMAZING learning experience. Learning how to configure snort properly only through CLI teaches you a ton about linux and about how to run things from a command line. You don't learn crap from setting up a linksys router. My mother can do that.

ss2chef, Does smoothwall use Snort? Just wondering, I have never used it and I am thinking about giving it a try for the heck of it.

[ss2chef]

Originally posted here by The Grunt
ss2chef, Does smoothwall use Snort? Just wondering, I have never used it and I am thinking about giving it a try for the heck of it.

SNORT is part of the install with a lite configuration to begin with.
You will enjoy working with it.