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#1 2014-01-30 00:55:32

MikeDacre
Member
From: San Francisco Bay Area
Registered: 2013-01-18
Posts: 51
Website

[SOLVED] Creating an invisible-to-the-outside network with Arch

Hi All,

I want to create an internal network to share access to a larger business network and to the outside world.

Essentially, I want to create a small network that is invisible to the other machines and routers of our network, but which shares all ports.  My current thinking right now is to buy a network card for my desktop, connect it to a wifi router(specifically this one as it has enough power to reach a few rooms over), and create a wifi network with a hidden-SSID.

I will then set up port forwarding on my desktop to share my primary ethernet network with the wifi network on my other ethernet card.

I don't know very much about networking though, so I want to know if this setup will be visible to the greater network, or if it will be hidden?  Also, is that a good wifi router to get for this purpose, and does it matter which ethernet card I get?

Thanks for your help with this, I realize this a pretty disjointed question - with hardware, software, and random networking questions all mixed together.

-Mike

Last edited by MikeDacre (2014-10-14 16:10:35)

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#2 2014-10-14 16:10:24

MikeDacre
Member
From: San Francisco Bay Area
Registered: 2013-01-18
Posts: 51
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Creating an invisible-to-the-outside network with Arch

This is actually very simple to do. The wifi router I mentioned in my previous post works well, and any old ethernet card with a chipset supported by the current kernel (most of them), will work too. Then all you do is connect the server to the 'modem' port of the router via an ethernet cable, and configure some sort of dhcp server like dhcpd or dnsmasq to give the wifi router an IP. To share the internet with it, forward your internet connection with iptables and you are good. If you want to also connect to the wifi with the server - for example because that makes file sharing easier - then you need to be a little careful with your routing table to make sure you don't try to connect to the net via the wifi connection.

Most routers support hidden SSIDs, just log in to the router and configure that directly.

Hey presto, you are done, you have a hidden wifi network that allows other machines to connect to the net through your server.

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