Building a Cooperative Multi-Household Network based on Linux
Monday, November 1st, 2004The concept requires at least two households, ideally each with static IP addresses (DSL, Cable or otherwise). The model should easily extend to more than two households. Each household will manage a local area network including a cheap firewall/router (Linksys or D-Link or similar), an Ethernet network, a Linux server and one or more client PCs.
Individually, the Linux server in each household will support a File/Print Server, a local ntp server and a caching name server. Collectively, the households will support DNS, ftp, http, smtp/pop3 and other Internet-facing services.
Some background: I created my first Linux server on an old 200MHz Pentium II PC I had laying around. It has a 20GB hard drive, a NIC and a CDROM drive. Perfect for reading the Fedora Core 3 CDs I made. I decided to call this server ducati. I have always been a motorcyclist and there have been enough motorcycle brands in existence to support my eventual massively distributed Linux network. I will call my brother’s server “suzuki.”