[lug] Knowledge shopping list

[Chris Wade]

Thanks all for all the help and information on telnetd security.  I am
inspired to put together a 'knowledge shopping list' with all the things I
am going to need to know to get my setup working the way I want it.. any
pointers to technical docs, previous threads etc. would be greatly
appreciated... :)

Here's what I have (hope my ascii graphics come across well):

Internet 
 |
 V
At&t at home cable modem
(supports NAT)
 |
 V
Hub --> Suse 7.1 Pro w/ everything installed
 |----> Win2000 Laptop, used for VPN to work
 |----> WinME laptop (ugh)

This setup is okay, we all get out to the internet with it, but I want to do
a lot more.  Here's what I think I would like:

Internet
 |
 V
Something better than cable modem for running a server
 |
 V
Suse 7.1 acting as firewall, web server, mailrouter, gateway, development
environment
 |
 V
Hub
 |
 V
Home network consisting of The abovementioned Windows laptops plus an old
PowerMac


I've read messages here where people refer to setups like this that they
have running... is this pretty standard?  I know that, at a minimum, I want
to be running Apache w/PHP 4.0.6 with mysql and postgresql... haven't used
postgres at all but would like to learn it... I'm okay with setting up the
Apache/PHP stuff.  I've done that so many times at work it makes me dizzy.
But I also need to figure out how to get my second network card running
(Netgear, box says linux supported but it didn't detect), and then set it up
so that I can still access the internet from all four machines as well as
get mail routed to the three behind the firewall.  I have a domain pointed
to this box... I use mail forwarding as a registrar service, where all mail
to my domain gets forwarded to a single address, but I would like to have a
lot more control over it (i.e. separate addresses to separate mailboxes).
Will still need to do VPN through the linux firewall to work, and oh yes, I
will want to set up Samba (which I've done) and Netatalk (which I haven't
done).  

At&t requests that you don't run a server w/ one of their cable modems, and
I can understand why... bandwidth shrinks dramatically in the outgoing
direction and tends to clog things up for everybody else.  Is there anything
else of comparable cost that would be more amenable to this kind of usage?
If not, what am I looking at paying (roughly) if I want to up my outgoing
bandwidth by using some other service?

Thanks in advance for help with all or just parts of this...

Chris