Roadrunner; My DSL Solution

[Bradley Miller]

At 05:58 AM 12/19/99 -0600, Dana wrote: 

>>>>

<excerpt><fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Can someone direct me
to the detailed (hopefully) instructions for connecting a Linux Box to
kc.roadrunner.com.  Thanks

</smaller></fontfamily>  

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Dana

</smaller></fontfamily></excerpt>

Actually, I have DSL service to my home, so it's a bit different than the
cable hook-up, but in essence here's what I did:

1) Grab a 486 box laying around, mine was a 486DX50 with about 8mb of
memory stuffed in it.  Most flea-markets or used pc places have them for
$15 for the board alone . . . sometimes cheaper.   

2) Get two network cards, again the local PC shop (Beyond Bytes in
Independence on 40 Hwy) had 3COM 3c509 cards used for $5 each.   Pay
attention to that particular card though, I bought 5 cards all together
to get 2 that actually worked.  The reason?  The cards were setup in a
EASA bus slot, and to get them back would have required undoing them.  
On my 486 it would totally lock and not boot up, on a Pentium system I
could get it to boot and run enough diagnostics to learn what the problem
was.   Fortunately Beyond Bytes return policy let me get working ones
after enough tries.  ;-)

3) Goto www.linuxrouter.org and download the distribution 2.9.4 is what I
used.  You can't use the automated stuff to make the files, since they
were setup for 2.9.3 and won't work for 2.9.4.   Basically, you need to
grab the files to light the 3COM card off and then copy them to the disk
that you'll be booting from.   The linuxrouter project is basically a
kernel that will fit on a 1.4mb floppy.  My system will boot up and then
runs entirely on memory.

4) Installing the two nics can be a little interesting -- I managed to
get everything to work without a problem -- just dig deep into the
help/how-to files for both the linuxrouter.org stuff, and the networking
how-to stuff.  

That's what I did for my system.   My ethernet 0 card goes to my ADSL
(Alcatel) modem in my basement.  The cable comes up and into my (temp)
office upstairs.  The ethernet 1 card goes to my hub to be sent to my
seven PC home network.  (Yes . . . I do glow in the dark.)   All of my
internal PC's have their own class-c numbering scheme, and the linux box
handles all the routing issues for in/out bound traffic.  It works like a
charm!   My wife can surf, I can surf, and my servers and other PC's can
do their stuff all while sitting on one IP address.

Hope this helps some!

-- Bradley Miller