[svlug] IP MASQ vs. Proxy.

[Dave Zarzycki]

On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Scott Jaderholm wrote:

> I am not exactly sure what these do.  From what I understand they allow
> multiple computers to connect to the internet through one connection by
> sharing one IP#.  Is there anything better about IP masqerading than
> running a proxy server? 
> Are they the exact same thing?  

To answer the second question first, no.

IP masq. is in my opinion, a much better solution than a proxy in most
cases. If you were to look at the tradition OSI perspective on now
networks are designed, a proxy would need to talk at the application
layer. In other words, your application would either need to be directly
aware of it, such as a http proxy in a web browser, or you would need to
have the proxy be aware of which machine you want to talk to. Neither of
these solutions is desirable by most. IP masq. is a transparent to most
programs, setup once and forget about it solution. To be honest, there are
some protocols such as ftp, or RealAudio that cause some problems, but
solutions aready exist for those. Look at the IP Masq. HOWTO at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/

> I was thinking about taking my 486 33Mhz and moving my 56k modem into it.
> (modem is ISA) And setting that system up as a firewall and have that one
> run my internet connection. Then I would just have that 486 as my gateway
> and I would run my P166 through it. That way I could reset my 166 and not
> have to shutdown my Internet connection. Also it would teach me how to
> setup a network and how to use firewalls and IP masquerading.  Would this
> be a good idea? 

Yes.

> Would my 166's connection to internet be slower than it is now?

No. In fact, if you run squid on the "gateway," you might actually notice
an increase in speed for your web browsing.

> Also I wanted to add a 486dx50 laptop into this puzzle.  I wanted to
> connect it via PLIP to either the 166 or the 486 33.  Which one would be a
> better choice?  Would the parrallel port be too slow to run irc through?
> Thanks for any answers.  Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

Although I have no direct experiance with PLIP, you shouldn't notice it's
speed when doing IRC. In fact, the parallel port is something like 80KB/s
if my memory serves me correctly.

Again, look at the PLIP howto at sunsite.

davez


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