Written By:
Date Posted: August 20, 2001

A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of this software that will allow you to share out your Internet connection more reliably and faster than Window's ICS. After two days battling with the software I finally emerged as the victor with a working router/firewall. Some of the things I have noticed that work (that didn't through ICS) are that I can receive and send IRC DCC file transfers, ICQ transfers now work again and a noticeable difference using the internet in general.

This is a small guide written to guide you on your journey of setting up a Linux router/firewall. It'll allow you to share your Internet connection and provide some protection to your home network.

Requirements

Hardware:
The oldest computer you can get your hands on (within reason). Just couldn't convince yourself the old 486 is really obsolete? Well, here is a good use for it. I personally am using a P75 with a 500MB hard drive. The hard drive is optional. You will need at least 8MB of RAM.

Two network interface cards (NICs). I prefer using ISA network cards as you can set the hardware address and know exactly where they are. Also since most of you can't afford an Internet connection over 10Mb/s it should be plenty fast.

Software:
Go to , follow their download link and grab the newest version (0.2.7 at this writing). Unzip the package into a directory and you should see this in your directory:

Setup

At this point you will need to find yourself a floppy to use to write the disk image to. Go to the freesco directory and double click the make_fd.bat file. A command window will come up. Place a formatted floppy in your A: drive and hit Enter.

Wait for the image to extract and now we are ready to boot your router for the first time!

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