Ok, I have been doing upgrades to my network en masse and I think I am ready to tackle a VPN. So, my simple solution is to buy a wired VPN/Firewall Router. But, I still need to have wireless access. So, my question is, can my current wireless router (Linksys WRT54G) be configured as simply an access point? I haven't looked around the web interface too much but I think if I just turn off the DHCP and let the wired router do the work I will be fine. Is this the case? I can always buy a wireless access point but I don't really want to if the router will work just fine as one.
I believe you can make the wireless router an access point, disable the dhcp server on it, and just let the VPN router be the dhcp, give the wireless router it's own IP, the rest you should be able to figure out. That's basically what I did with my network.
Yes most wireless routers have the option of making it act as an AP only. This makes all the adjustments easily with one option change.
Well, I went on the Linksys site and it basically said what StimpE did. Unfortunately mine does not have the AP option but the instructions were to turn off DHCP and out the router on the main one's subnet. If I do this I will also disable the firewall.
Well the wired router I am getting (if I get it) is going to be the router/firewall/vpn endpoint so I don't need the other one. It would probably just cause problems having two. Buuut, I might also use this SME server that AT suggests. I downloaded it and am thinking about using it but I will need to buy a hard drive if I do. I assume that turing off the DHCP on the router would let me do this. I only have one ethernet card so I would have integrated going in and the PCI card going out, and then have the router functioning as a switch and wireless AP. Would that work ok?
If you just want a firewall / edge-router, avoid SME and go for IPCop or m0n0wall. If you want an all-in-one network server that shares files, handles e-mail, and also acts as a web gateway, SME is a good option. But SME's firewall feature set is very limited compared to a distro which is designed to act as a firewall. IPCop also handles VPN connections amazingly intuitively, while in SME this is a much more manual process (and troublesome if you don't know both Linux and networking very well, although probably easier than IPSec in Windows). Another important thing that you must do for one router to exist behind another is to set your default route. A default route is that next hop towards the internet, so your wireless router would use the internal IP of the wired router as its default route. Otherwise, your packets will not reach the Internet from your WAP.
Is IPCop fairly easy to set up and use? I have used Linux before but my knowledge is fairly limited. I used Mandrake as the only OS on my computer for a few months, but my wireless card wasn't supported so I gave up on it. Maybe I will reinstall it now that I have run Cat5e areound my house. But, back on topic, it needs to be simple.
IPCop requires no prior Linux experience. It is installed and initially configured via ncurses GUI, then once it's setup the machine no longer requires a video card, monitor mouse or keyboard (assuming your PC can boot without them). At that point, you would do any other configuration over the secure web GUI. The only knowledge required to setup IPCop is enough networking knowhow to properly configure a router.
