From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Apr 29 21:40:53 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA04025 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 29 Apr 1996 21:40:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (vet.vet.purdue.edu [128.210.79.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA04018 for ; Mon, 29 Apr 1996 21:40:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id XAA17509 for ; Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:41:42 -0500 Message-Id: <199604300441.XAA17509@localhost> X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.vet.purdue.edu: Host localhost didn't use HELO protocol X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.6 3/24/96 To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Setting up a network at home Reply-To: blewis@vet.vet.purdue.edu From: Benjamin Lewis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:41:41 -0500 Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hello- I've been running FreeBSD on my machine at home for quite a while. I have it connected to the internet through user PPP -> SLiRP, and I'm tremendously happy with it. I plan on purchasing another (more powerful) computer and installing FreeBSD on that too. Naturally, having two network-capable machines in the same house just begs for a little in-home net of my own. I've played around with this sort of thing using various friends' and family members' notebook computers and a serial connection, but I'm feeling a bit more ambitious now and would like to set up an ethernet connection between the computers. I've read various man pages, Handbook entries, FAQ's and even Linux How-To's, and that allowed me to do the kind of half-*ssed networking that I've done to this point. This time, I'd like to "Do It Right," but I just don't know *exactly everything* that is required. I've never worked with ethernet, so I'm pretty clueless in that area. This is kind of a "vanity" thing, so I thought I'd make it a little more complex than absolutely necessary in order to learn a bit more about this stuff. host1: Gateway PPP : 10.0.2.15 ether: 10.0.2.16 (I understand that I need a separate IP number for this, correct?) 486DX33, ISA, 16mb. Running 2.1.0-RELEASE host2: Workstation ether: 10.0.2.17 (will be) Pentium or Cyrix 133, PCI/ISA, 16 or 32mb. Will run whatever the latest SNAP is when I purchase it. host2 will occasionally run Win95 (ick!) since I'm tired of using TeX and troff for stupid stuff like letters. I thought I'd run a little name server on host1 so that Win95 will be able to use hostnames instead of IP numbers to refer to local hosts. Does Win95 have an equivalent to /etc/hosts that would eliminate this need? I'm interested in finding out what the various config files should look like, i.e. /etc/hosts, /etc/named/*, whatever else needs to be changed. The Handbook is pretty clear about /etc/printcap, so I think I can figure that one out (it probably won't need to be complicated since I'll just hook the printer up to host2 and I'm unlikely to want to print from host1). >From what I've read so far, it looks like 10 Base-2 cabling is the way to go for an el-cheapo net like this one. On a side note, does anyone have any recommendations for inexpensive ethernet cards to use in this application? Like I said earlier, I've sort-of done this before using a serial connection, but I think it worked more by accident than design. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. -Ben -- Benjamin Lewis (blewis@vet.vet.purdue.edu)