Setting Up A Secure Server/Firewall
Hardware And Required Information

What hardware and information do we need to start?

First of all we will need a computer with an ability to connect to the Internet and to other computers on a local area network. We are going to set up a Linux based server and firewall using the following hardware which isn't particularly powerful, but is nevertheless probably over-specification in some areas, especially if you are just running a firewall without the Windows file sharing/printing requirement.

233Mhz Cyrix CPU
128Mb RAM
Network card (NE2000 compatible ISA PNP)
US Robotics Sportster Modem plugged into com2
1.2Gb HDD
3.5" 1.44Mb Fdd
Hitachi CD ROM
Mouse - not fitted

We will be using Demon Internet as our Internet service provider. Demon assigns us a fixed IP address for our connection to them. This address will be used for our modem. I am going to indicate this IP address as www.www.www.www to indicate the IP address of the device that is connected to the rest of the world. The other relevant addresses (which will be supplied by your own ISP) are in the case of Demon:-

Name server 1 - 158.152.1.43
Name server 2 - 158.152.1.58
Point to point partner - 158.152.1.222
Inbound mail server - pop3.demon.co.uk
Outbound mail server - post.demon.co.uk
Modem access number - 08452121666
ISP account name - smithco
ISP password - H3gLsD9n

We will also wish to use a standard IP address for our network card that communicates with our local area network. As mentioned, we will use a range of addresses that have been specifically set aside for the purposes of allowing small/medium size organisations to allocate IP addresses within their own networks for their own use. That way, if any packets of data manage to 'escape' onto the Internet due to incorrect configuration of our network, server or router, our ISP should discard the data completely. The address we will use is 192.168.1.1 for our network card that connects to our local area network.

There is also one other IP address we will use. It is the logical, as opposed to physical, address 127.0.0.1 which is simply a dummy device, a place-holder if you like, to tell the operating system to refer to itself rather than any physical device such as a network card, ISDN card, modem, etc. Again, this address is standard to networks that use TCP/IP. We will see what it can be used for in a minute.

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© Copyright Andrew Bennett 2006