*BSD News Article 74489


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!news.Bond.edu.au!news
From: Quinton Dolan <q@kirra.its.bond.edu.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Yet another PPP Server =)
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 14:49:43 +1000
Organization: Bond University
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <31F459E7.5261@kirra.its.bond.edu.au>
References: <flakey-2107961818010001@slsyd7p63.ozemail.com.au>
NNTP-Posting-Host: fiddich.its.bond.edu.au
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b5a (X11; I; SunOS 5.5 sun4m)
CC: flakey@ozemail.com.au, q@kirra.its.bond.edu.au

Jon Harsem wrote:
> 
> Yes , I have decided to make better use of my FreeBSD machine (2.1.0)
> @ work to provide my local Home Network with some much wanted Internet
> access =) ..but how ...
> 
> The handbook @ freebsd.org seems to specify using ijppp - can I use the stanard
> pppd ? .. and how do I get it to route 5 Ip addresses to my Lan ?
> 

If you don't want to worry about obtaining addition REAL!! IP's and
adding static routes to these IP's  to your machine at work you could
try a PPP emulation program called SLiRP. I think it's in the ports
collection (not sure). The latest version is 1.0c I think and it is
probably the easiest method of doing what you want. I am not sure of the
site, I think it is http://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/slirp from memory.
The program uses the network code straight out of pppd to do the ppp
stuff so compatibility shouldn't be an issue here. It also supports SLIP
and CSLIP but PPP is recommended.

There are a couple of trade offs though. Your machines at home don't
actually appear to the outside world as visible, they masquarade under
the IP address of your machine at work, and there are some things you
can't do like run some types of WebPhone style applications. But the up
side is you can use any IP you want at home (although 10.0.2.X is
recommended) and you don't need to add any special routing stuff
anywhere. All you need to do is to configure the PPP machine at home to
use IP forwarding and to tell all your other machines at home to use
that machines Ethernet IP as their gateway. This should work for any PPP
client software that supports IP forwarding, eg. NT/Linux/BSD. It's that
Simple.

The added bonus is that your machines at home are automatically
firewalled from incoming attacks at no extra charge. I have the option
of using PPP or SLiRP at home and I use SLiRP 99.9% of the time because
it's easier and most times faster. I have used SLiRP for about 9
months... almost every day and have never had a problem. For my setup
the server is a Sparc running SunOS (I have also used an Ultrix box) at
work and the client at home is NT/Linux with two additional machines
connect via ethernet.

If you have the ability to use more than one modem at home then you can
also configure SLiRP to perform load balancing over the PPP connection
(although you have to be using BSD/Linux at the client end). I have not
tried this myself.

There is better documentation in the SLiRP package about how to
configure this kind of setup.

> All help appreciated =) .. and strongly needed =) ..
> 

I hope you have found this helpful...that was the intent anyway :)

Seeya...Q