Internet router for small home network using openSUSE 11.1

English Network/Internet
#1

I intend to use openSUSE 11.1 for a Internet router for my small home network - I want to replace windows 2003.

I have 3 ETH cards (1 for WAN and 2 for local network - I can also use just 1 card). My connection to the Internet is VDSL (I get an IP address using the ISP DHCP) and on the local network I have some Linux and some Windows clients which need access to the router for file sharing (probably Samba?). I also need remote access to the router for both Linux and Windows clients (probably VNC?). I will also need to run an eMule and Torrent client with Web Access (probably aMule and KTorrent?).

I already found some tutorials:
ICS - openSUSE
openSUSE ICS: Internet Connection Sharing (Linux IP Masquerading) with Suse or Windows Servers

What I want to know is if this would be enough to set up the Internet router.

#2

These tutorials are enough to build router box for your environment, but you only need to use 2 ethernet card
one for External another one for Internal.
If you want to use KTorrent, please shall attempt to use qBittorrent that is my a little bit opinion.

#3

Thank you for directing me to qBittorrent. I think I read something about it some time ago, but when I looked at the feature list again I was sold :slight_smile:

About the 3 eth cards, it is just that I had them laying around and I think it also helps to distribute the load more evenly on both sides of the network. I have a network switch for 2 connections (2 neighbors) connected to one card, but then I also have a WLAN AP (with integrated switch) connected to the other card (1 local PC and up to 4 wireless clients) so I think I profit a few micro seconds :slight_smile:

I also forgot about some kind of network monitoring. Is it possible to monitor the amount of traffic from a specific IP address and possibly limit it?

#4

Here you can find the network monitor “NTOP” installation article, but if want to configure some rule to accept or deny or other limit, please use firewall tool.
BSD/Linux Tutorial Zone: Ntop network analyzer installation procedure on openSUSE 11.0

#5

So I set up my openSUSE router without a problem (it was really easy - much easier than windows 2003).

I installed qBittorrrent but the web UI was a bit lacking in “settings” (you can’t change any settings on it), so I had to go with KTorrent (it has a similar problem but I can now at least change the UL and DL limits).

aMule is much better program for a “server configuration” compared to eMule, since it has the ability to connect to a remote instance (with aMuleGUI) and you basically control it like it was on your PC.

I tried to use ntop but without sucess, but from what I have seen so far I no longer need it, since I don’t have the same problems that I had with windows 2003 - for some unknown reason ping to the DNS server went up to 2000 ms an even bigger for other sites. I suspect that Linux firewall is more successful than the one from windows 2003.

There is only one little problem I have with this setup. Remote administration is a bit trickier than on windows. Since I need a user that is always logged on and I have no monitor connected to the PC I can’t connect to this session. If a monitor is not connected to the PC the x11vnc just shows me a black screen of that session but I can log in on a new session with VNC (with a viewer and from the browser) but at least for now I can live with it :slight_smile:
What I don’t know is why don’t I get asked for a password when I connect to the VNC session, I get to the openSUSE login manager whe I connect to a new session, but I think I should be asked for a password when I try to connect - can it be done, since it would make it more secure… I think this was set up using in Yast for VNC administration.