[catfan]

Today i will show you how to make a network with cat 5 cable.

You need:

• 3x cat 5 cable with ethernet plug
  
• 1x switch
  
• 1x bad/old pc
  
• 2x new/shiny pc
  
• 3x network card or onboard lan (100mbit)
  

Step 1:
You put 1 network card in all pc or do nothing if it have onboard lan already.

Step 2:
Install linux on the bad/old pc. Any linux is ok i think but dont install gui. It just waste resource.

Step 3:
Take 1 cat 5 cable and connect the bad/old pc to uplink on your switch.

Step 4:
Take other 2 cat 5 cables and connect shiny pcs to normal switch port.

Step 5:
Boot bad pc and issue this command in root terminal:

Code: (Select All)

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Step 6:
Your network is very dumb so you must configure IP address of all pc now. For bad pc issue this command in root terminal (if you ignored advice to use onboard lan and still put extra network it maybe is different device so you must use eth1 or look at ifconfig output to see which has cable connected):

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ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

For good pcs it depend on your OS but be sure you choose 192.168.0.x but not with x as used by other pc in your network and put 192.168.0.1 for gateway.

Step 7:
You are done and your network is ready.

Advanced (maybe for next tutorial):

• Make startup scripts and firewall
  
• Setup up internet and nat on your bad pc (router!)
  
• Give your network dns and dhcp (make it is less dumb) so you can have hostnames and not need to give ip by hand anymore
  
• Use nicer ips. rfc1918 is boring... better to have secret service network!!