Install a Linux Network Gateway

Don’t throw out that old hardware! If you’ve got an older machine sitting in the closet collecting dust, you can put it to use as a cheap network gateway and save yourself the cost of a dedicated router. While cable/DSL routers have come down quite a bit in cost, the flexibility a dedicated Linux box offers could be of tremendous benefit, especially if you choose to take advantage of the features.

To get you started on the way to network goodness, Aditya Nag has written this HOWTO for Linux.com. It covers all the basics, including setting up the NIC cards, setting up DHCP for dynamic client configuration, setting up the box to handle DNS requests for the clients, and setting up iptables to do network address translation and routing for the internal network.

You could probably get by without doing your own DNS by supplying the DNS information for your ISP via DHCP. The rest of the setups are also fairly rudimentary; just enough to get you up and running. Links are provided for more indepth study of Netfilter/iptables.

With a home-grown solution like this and a little bit of study, you could easily have this box hosting web pages, providing VPN connectivity and remote access, acting as a game server, and more.