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Broadband

Virgin Media specifics

Annie Brion, a former Virgin Media user, has put together her own Broadband FAQ.

Home Networks

Thinking of setting up a home network and don’t know where to start, or what you need to buy. Try these links:

http://www.driverzone.com/guides/network.htm

Now you’ll need to share your Internet Connection. Whether on dialup or a cable modem this page will be useful:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com

If you have come across any other good network pages please let us know by using out contact form.

I’ve heard about this ‘NAT‘ thing…What is it?

NAT (Network Address Translation) allows you to share your Internet connection for multiple computers on a network with the use of only a single public IP address. It works by rewriting packets from internal machines then sending them off over the internet, when the returning packets are received the main machine remembers which internal machine made the original request then forwards the packets onto that box.

[ Originally from http://www.thesync.co.uk/faq/ - Thanks! ]

I found a pretty neat bit of software at Clark Connect. It is basically a cut down Redhat Linux distribution with a design goal of running as a firewall/router. It is really easy to set up (you do not need to be a Linux/Unix guru), it’s secure, does IP Masquerading (NAT) and runs a DHCP service. All you need is an old PC, minimum spec a 486 with 16mb of RAM, 250mb of hard drive space and two network cards. It will even run an Apache web server if you need it. Configuration is done via Webmin, a browser based utility so everything can be done from a Windows PC. It’s big download but it will probably end up on a magazine cover CD eventually.

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