New network
This weekend I finally put the Moon here onto a sound network footing. I pay some phone company for 3 bits of Internet (8 addresses less one for broadcast and one for network number). Until recently my desktop/server has been also doing duty as a router/firewall, meaning I really had 2 2-bit subnets each of 2 addresses.
I actually used more of the address space by doing various bits of network black magic, which I don’t condone.
Last weekend I picked up a WRT54GL wireless router and VLAN switch. I’d burned Linux on a couple of these for work and decided it was a good piece of hardware to help straighten out what I laughingly called my network “architecture.” We won’t go into the 10 Mb/s hub that was still central to the thing.
At any rate, the router came last week and I spent a few hours this week burning OpenWRT onto it and configuring it. Now I have a sane network architecture that has the new router doing:
- Proxy ARP to keep my DSL provider confused
- Firewall
- Single IP address on both sides of the firewall
- ssh access
- and a gratuitous use of cron and ntpclient to keep its date correct
None of that was rocket science, though it was good clean fun. And I’m delighted to have a more orderly and sane network layout that lets me use an extra address and reboot my server without kicking anyone else off the LAN.
I’m so happy with it I decided to share.