RE: [TCLUG:4816] Peer-to-Peer ethernet

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

>>
>> >>> Hugh Johnson <hugh@semplicesoft.com> 03/15 10:13 PM >>>
>> Where do I find out how to set up Redhat for a peer-to-peer network?
>>
>> I'm a networking know-nothing. Although I've set up a couple for
>> Windows and Mac, I managed more by muddling than learning. What do
>> all these acronyms mean? What do I put in the DNS fields when I'm not
>> using domain names? Can I tweedle the subnet mask to use the same
>> setup for my internet dial-out? (Don't have a router; not even a hub
>> right now. It's strictly a 2-box network with a crossover cable.)
>

> Troy Johnson:
> I could explain all of this (badly) or I could point you to a couple
> of books that will guide you now and into the future (an somebody else
> should post a good URL so that you can get that for free ;-).
>
> TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt - breifly covers TCP/IP
> configuration and then the configuration of many TCP/IP services.
>
> TCP/IP Addressing: Designing and Optimizing Your IP Addressing Scheme
> by Buck Graham - covers TCP/IP configuration and routing issues in
> depth and in a very readable style.
>

	Matt Welsh's 'Running Linux' has a chapter on networking.  I'd recommend
getting that book before either of the above two, as the book is more
general-purpose to begin with, and you may never need some of the more
high-level stuff in both of the above books if you're just running a simple
household network.  Manpages on ifconfig, netstat, route and resolver are
strongly suggested reading as well, at least once you've got your feet wet.

	I'm not sure how far you've gotten with this, but chances are, you already
have IPX/SPX working on your RedHat box (it's enabled by default, or was
last time I checked).
	TCP/IP is pretty easy to set up, as long as you don't need to dabble in
routing or masquerading...  Just make sure all your machines are set up with
an address like "192.168.100.n" where "n" is a number between 1 and 254 that
is different on every machine.  Then just edit /etc/hosts to assign names to
those numbers.  Provided your network isn't wired directly to the Internet,
you're free to use any domain and host names you like.  At that point
(unless I'm forgetting something incredibly important, which happens), you
should be able to ping, run ftp, telnet and http, and probably Samba and NFS
services as well.

	Your dial-up connection works as a totally seperate interface, with an IP
address, netmask, etc. that are totally unique to itself (important
networking concept:  computers don't have network addresses, *interfaces*
do.)  Once you've got your internal network set up, you should be able to
configure ipfwadm to allow packets to go from any computer on your network
out the modem.  But we should probably save that for another day.

---

Eric Hillman
CCCU -- UNIX Sysadmin
ehillman@cccu.com
The opinions expressed in this message are mine.  You can't have them.