B. Mann Consulting

For most home networks, I actually don't recommend setting up e-smith as your main gateway. Why not? Well, while e-smith is more than capable of functioning as a gateway (it does an excellent job, in fact), if you are not very comfortable supporting it if something does go wrong...then you lose all your Internet access.

More than likely it will be user error (i.e. you try and install something that doesn't work) or hardware failure (turns out that old P200 with the open case isn't as reliable as you thought) that brings it down.

In any case, how should you configure your home network setup? Well, I'm assuming that you have the e-smith acting as a server and one, two, or more other machines, all wanting to share a single broadband connection. The easiest way to get reliability in such a setup is to go out and buy a broadband router. These are available at most stores starting at around $60. If you want wireless or other such features, you will pay more, but a basic box with 4 network ports and one upstream port will be about that price.

If you already have your e-smith server setup, make sure that DHCP is turned off. I would recommend setting up the router first, then getting the server setup. The server only needs to be setup in "server-only" mode, and only needs one Ethernet card.

Set up the router to connect to your cable or DSL provider. Typically, the internal network addresses are in the 192.168.0.x range, or a similar subnet. Enable the router's DHCP functions (usually on by default). Set the range of addresses to be different than the address of the e-smith server. For example, if the server is set to address 192.168.0.200, get the router to assign addresses from .100 to .150.

Now you should set all your client computers to use DHCP for networking. They should now be able to access the Internet.

The router should have a setting labeled something like "virtual server" or "DMZ" or something similar. It is likely in a Security, Advanced, or Port Forwarding section of the interface. It will have a space to enter a local IP address. Enter the IP address of the e-smith server here. You're done!

What this does is set up the router to automatically forward all traffic to the e-smith server, except if specific forwarding rules had been set up on the router.