[chat] ADSL network geometry

[Patrick Lesslie <patricklesslie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm working on a small network at a friend's place, and
I would just like to see if I have it straight in my
mind, and ask a few questions.

The network contains:
192.168.1.2    Windows 98
192.168.1.3    Mac OS X machine
192.168.1.4    Mac OS 9.1
 and now ...
192.168.1.42   Debian P233 with a big samba share (thanks to Tridge OSF ;)


The ADSL router does NAT masquerading and I don't know what else.
Perhaps it is also a dhcp server?  I believe that all the other
hosts are not using dhcp, but have been statically configured.
And it seems to me that it couldn't be firewalling.

At the moment the debian machine is not doing anything much
except samba and nfs (on the same share), and no firewalling.

It certainly could though, and from what I gather from recent SLUG
posts, it would require a second internal network like this:


             ( 192.168.1.0/24 )
  modem                             debian box
  -----            hub or           ----------
 192.168.1.1 -----crossover----- eth0  192.168.1.42
 modem             cable    .--- eth1  192.168.2.42
                            |
                            |
                           hub             ( 192.168.2.0/24 )
                          / | \
                        other hosts
                        -----------
                       192.168.2.[2-4]


The routing modem is connected to tpg.  I think it has
a fixed address there.  I guess this means that
it is connected to Telstra, and they host
tpg servers, or else there is another cable going from
Telstra to tpg.

As far as I know, these routing modems don't do port forwarding
or anything.  Is that true?  Or are they really
just small programmable servers?  Could I configure it and
save changing the rest of the network over to 192.168.2.0 ?

The win 98 machine has no trouble with the samba share from
the "NT server" running debian, but the two macs had only
limited success.  The OS X machine was fine with it but then
it lost it, and finally crashed hard, and the 9.1 machine
saw the host but not the shares, although it did see some
other spurious non-existent shares.  I'm hoping that these
problems will go away when I fix the hostnames, which are
full of spaces and quotes and things :P  ( like "so-and-so's Mac")
and not consistently recorded in the hosts file ( :} my fault... ),
and give them all a better workgroup name than "WORKGROUP".
I didn't see anywhere to set this on the macs.  Is it
possible/required to set a SMB workgroup on them?

Thanks,

Patrick


--
 "How do you tell the difference between an introverted mathematician,
 and an extroverted one?  The introverted mathematician looks at
 his shoes when he is talking to you. The extroverted mathematician
 looks at your shoes."

 "Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them"
   -- Brian Eno "Oblique strategies"
--