If You're Going To Do It.....

Do it right!

I've been tossing around the idea of implementing a semi-intelligent network architecture in my apartment. At the moment my network, like most home networks is a router, and a bunch of machines plugged into it.

This works, and it works quite well. However if I want to do anything other then basic networking I run into some problems. So I've been tossing around the following ideas.

Phase 1:
I want to procure a white box, an old tower with low power requirements, preferably no more then a 150 watts. Now, this will be my gateway, it will be the machine connected directly to the outside network. It will function as my web server, most likely Apache, a file server, Samba?, as well as any other hosting and server tasks.

This machine will run a flavor of Linux. (Ubuntu Server) As I don't plan on ever connecting this machine to a monitor I'll most likely run either a strictly command line interface or run some sort of X-Windows environment that I can remotely connect to.

This machine will start inside my router, as part of my current setup. Once I am comfortable with Linux, and have a firewall and other server applications installed I will move it to the outside of my router and connect my router to the gateway machine.

Phase 2:
Once the gateway is up and working well I plan on Wiresharking all of the incoming traffic and evaluating my configuration for holes. Once I am satisfied with the security of the gateway I will procure more network cards and turn the gateway into a router/switch. This will remove the wireless router from needing to act as a DNS and it can now be used strictly to broadcast wireless.

Phase 3:
Once the above phases have been completed I hope t move away from Windows on my laptop and run a Linux environment (Xubuntu?) there as well. My desktop will remain a Windows box for gaming and C# development.

All in all I figure several weeks of work. Here's to crazy schemes!