connectivity & securty

[fused]

I have a moderate catering business & lease rooms for small seminars & lunches. I only have 3 pc's (peer-to-peer). I do not as of yet have an ISP but obviously will have one soon. A T1 has been mentioned. I'd like to offer Internet access for business events so they can use the net for their business. What do I need to achieve this. I don't want extreme top of the line, but want to be moderatly proteced & give my customers what they want & how do I keep all off my network. Any examples appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Tezdread]

T1 one connection for three computers ) sounds great! If you can afford it go for it!

I have 4 Win2k workstations and cut down Linux server/gateway running FTP over the internet and local network. I have a cable modem connection (512kbits a sec) and this is sufficient. You wont need FTP by the sounds of it so I am thinking that a cable connection would be more than enough for 3-5 people doing general surfing. I pay £20 (about $28) a month for the connection. What was the price of the T1 connection?

The server/gateway (

http://www.e-smith.org)

runs on an old Pentium 133mhz with 64mb RAM. It is the first time I've used any form of Linux and it is so simple. You don't need to know anything about Linux to use this in it's most basic form. It has great security features as it is based on Red Hat 7.1 and you can share files over your internal network. You can set it up as a server a gateway or a server/gateway which ever suits your needs.

For your client computers I would strongly suggest installing Win2k as this will give you the security you need internally.

Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[TheGrey]

imho

what you need is an inexpensive,relatively fast connection , like dsl or cable, something that does nat and a switch where customers can plug in their laptops, or even a wireless lan.

if you are planning to set up web servers, you'll need at least one static ip

 

[Guest_imported]

On the front of security & software:
you can use some cut down relatively cheap box with Linux and you could setup various services on it which might be helpful to you (mail server, web site ...) as well as some security protection like firewalls and NAT (IP masquarade)

My personnal advise would be to just setup NAT as it guarantees pretty high level of security for all the rest of your machines + you need to pay for only one IP address.

 

[pansophic]

If you don't want become a security weenie, I'd suggest that you get something commercial to protect the network. Ideally you'd get a firewall with at least 3 NICs in it, one for an external interface, one for your PCs and one for the transient systems. You can set up firewall rules that allow the catering PCs and the transient PCs to get to the internet, but not to each other.

I have used the Astaro Linux Firewall, it is relatively inexpensive (about $350) and you can set it up to do automatic updates so that you don't have to keep up with the security business. Of course you still have to buy a PC and install the software and configure the firewall rules.

Another option is the Cyberguard line. They are relatively inexpensive (under $5k) and are turnkey systems, so all you have to do is configure the ruleset. They also offer automatic updates over the Internet and come with 3 interfaces.

As far as a network for the transient computers, I'd probably install a small 10/100 switch (maybe 8 ports) and an 802.11b (or 802.11a when it becomes less pricey) and just leave everything wide open.

NAT is, of course, a good idea for both networks. If you have one static IP address, you can define firewall rules for a Webserver and/or Mail server that go to a specific machine on the internal network (preferrably a DMZ with only the externally accessible machine(s) on it).

mgs