ISP

[Guest Sherjakt-Flawke]

I am new here at Mandrivausers, so I would just like to say hello to everyone. Now, I am looking for some help on how to make my own ISP. I am soon to have a T3 connection running in to my house. About 50 friends and I talked about creating our own ISP, because this way, we can have constant availability to the Internet. (Some of them still use Dial-Up.) We decided to split the bill, and to have the connection run into my house, and supply I.P. addresses from there. Now, what I need help is with sugesstions on a Linux distribution that would run well as a server. I was thinking about Mandrake Linux 10.1 , Red Hat Enterprise 4, and Solaris 10, but I need some opinion from people that have experience. I also need help with the setting up part. Some hardware suggestions would be nice. I know that currently, we have a Macintosh XServe G5, an Intel Xeon based PC, and an old P3. In the structure, I want the Macintosh and the Intel server to handle the actual usage, friends connecting to the Internet through them. The P3 will be a firewall. If some help and suggestions with racks and other necessary hardware would also be appreciated. Plus, if you have any good providers that gives direct connection to the backbone would be nice, along with help with the I.P. assinging. Thanks ahead: Sherjakt-Flawke.

[DragonMage]

In my opinion, a distro is only as good as your experience with it. I have made servers using 3 distros so far, Mandrake, Fedora Core, and Slackware. Yet if I have to choose between the three, I would choose Mandrake no question because I am familiar with its quirks and things, so I can get it working/fixed quite quickly.

 

If you have the Linux expertise in house and you don't want to shell money for commercial support, I find that the best distro is Debian.

 

If not, or if you want commercial support, I prefer Novell / Suse to RedHat. The all-in-one configuration utility (YAST) really makes it easy to configure your server.

 

BTW, if before you shell out money for RHES, try CentOS first. It's basically RHES without the RedHat's involvement (i.e. pricing, and support). See if you are comfortable with RedHat's scheme of things. Then you can shell out the money for RHES if you so desire.

 

Stay away from Solaris, especially Solaris for X86. While Sun and some analysts are harping about how Solaris is more robust than Linux, there is one thing it lack severely which is hardware support. The list of hardware compatible with Solaris X86 is very thin, and most of the compatible hardware are pretty much sun hardware.

 

BTW, have you considered any of the BSD flavors?

 

Good luck in your endeavour. Tell us what you find out.

[Guest Sherjakt-Flawke]

Thanks for your opinion on the Operating System. I will go with Mandrake. Although that has been covered, still need help on the other aspects too. Any help?

[aioshin]

what about email, if you will be building email servers for your ISP, open source email server, try to visit the links below

http://www.qmailrocks.org/

http://postfixwiki.org/index.php?title=Vir...-IMAP_and_MySQL

[Guest Sherjakt-Flawke]

Thanks for the links! I appreciate them! Although, only the software portion along with some hardware aspects have been covered. I still need suggestions and help with the Internet Service Provider, so I can connect directly onto the net, not through servers. And help setting I.P. addresses up. Any small suggestion or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Qchem]

The easiest way to assign IP addresses will probably be to use a DNS server that assigns the addresses via dhcp. There are a few different DNS servers out there, bind being a common example.

[ianw1974]

Thanks for the links! I appreciate them! Although, only the software portion along with some hardware aspects have been covered. I still need suggestions and help with the Internet Service Provider, so I can connect directly onto the net, not through servers. And help setting I.P. addresses up. Any small suggestion or help would be greatly appreciated.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

This really depends where you live and what ISP's are available to you. Most ISP's would be able to allow you to connect to the internet, the problem comes on whether you'll be able to use certain aspects of the service and whether the ISP has blocked certain ports to stop you running mail servers, etc, etc.

 

You would have to write down what you're trying to achieve, and see if a basic connection would block you from using SMTP, or any other service you have in mind. Also, and most importantly, you'll need to ensure you have a static IP address. Again, most can do this, but they may require that you have a business ISP connection. The business ISP connection will allow you (or should allow you) to run business orientated systems, which would cover the requirements of email servers, web servers, etc, etc.

 

All you can do, is speak to a few, and find out the costings involved for running such a service. I would suggest however, that you're careful. The ISP will try and sell you everything to make as much money as possible, and you may not want to do this. At first, ask about a simple connection, and whether you get a static IP, and whether it allows you to run the services you intend to set up on your system.

 

For direct connection, you will need a router/firewall solution, so that the link isn't directly connected to a particular system. And you may even need two static IP's, one for the firewall and one for the router. This is because you'll direct the majority of your traffic to the firewall, so that NAT can be used to redirect the services to whichever private IP machine is running that service. Do not allocate static public internet addresses directly to the machine. This is a security risk!

 

Edit: Sorry, just realised, you're after connection the backbone. Similar to above, but I don't know what providers would be able to help you with this. You'll need to see which ones are available near yourselves! I'd expect this would be very expensive though.

[aioshin]

teleglobe is one of the provider of local and intl ISP

http://teleglobe.net/en/services/data_services/default.asp

[Guest Sherjakt-Flawke]

Alright, I got a fractioned T1 connection for 100 a month. That has been taken care of, and I got it installed. Now, I need to know this. Is it possible to share my connection with someone over a long distance, lets say, 100 Km, so they can get on the net through me? And if so, how can this be achieved?

[aioshin]

yes it's possible, you can ask your nearest telco provider, or the one that gave you that T1, if they can provide or connect that site you wish to be shared with your internet, the options would be, whatever they can offer... leased line, Framerelay or IP VPN via Dsl Transport...

now if they can provide the transport... if they can conncet both ends with eth interface, you can just provide them with an IP.. just like you are extending your LAN

[Guest Sherjakt-Flawke]

Great! Thanks a lot. I could not answer before, due to the fact that the firewalls on the servers got turned off, and they all became virus bombed. Also, it was too much hassle to have them in my house, too many cables. After all, two servers were sent to a nearby office, designed just for my needs. I got a room where I can store up to 50 servers racked, but I won't need that. Mainly everything is good now, but I still did not get that person connected over long distance. I kept one of the servers for personal use, and I gave the IT that works at the office full control over the other two. I just get the profit now, I had enough of working in the Terminal. Thanks for all of your replies again!