Web Proxy / Firewall

[Ron Smith]

The short answer is that yes, you will be able to do all of this using 
YDL.

Depending on how the network is set up, you may run into some 
challenges. Making some wild assumptions I presume that you will 
probably be using NAT between the LAN and the internet (this NAT could 
take place on the YDL machine or on the router as an example). 
Generically speaking using NAT can cause some problems. Email and 
browsing will work fine and most of the messenger applications have 
found ways around NAT, but some filesharing systems require user 
work-arounds and sometimes ftp seems to require that the user initiate 
a "passive mode" connection.

If all of that seems a bit confusing or overwhelming right now, don't 
worry. When broken down into smaller pieces, dealt with individually, 
and applied to the specifics of your setup it becomes quite 
understandable.

You seem to have the right attitude by admitting that "This will be my 
first of many questions..." and I am sure that you will find lots of 
help on this mailing list. I think that no matter what you end up using 
your G4 for, you will enjoy running YDL on it.

As Bill points out in his post, there are several ways of achieving 
this setup if you want to use your G4 on the LAN for other things (as a 
workstation or whatever) and have a machine dedicated to the single 
purpose of being the gateway/proxy for the network. One that he didn't 
mention is freesco (http://www.freesco.org/) which is super simple to 
configure and it runs off of a floppy! I know of several 386/486 PCs 
with a floppy drive and no hard drive that are functioning gateways 
using software from this project.

Feel free to contact me with further questions.

-Ron

On Thursday, July 31, 2003, at 02:00 PM, Susan Treglia wrote:

> ISP ---> DSL (router) ---> YDL (web proxy/firewall) --> LAN (all on 1 
> subnet
> (windows, macs and printers). I need the option to FTP outbound and
> inbound..MSN messenger and AIM, and of course the internet and email.