I have a netgear router rp614, I can only forward 20 ports is there a way to setup another router to free up more ports? or is there a router out there that can do more than 20 ports? I also have a linksys befsr41 spare.

Go with a Linksys WRT54G. It's also a wireless ap, but you can disable that if you don't need it. I use one of these at home and from what I can tell, there's no limit to the number of ports that you can forward with it.

Also, if you've got some hardware lying around, there's always the Linux firewall option. Check this site out for a really slick, and super easy linux based firewall/gateway. http://www.smoothwall.org/

Andy

so do you use smoothwall express?
My systems are all running win 2000 pro sp4. I have an extra pc doing nothing but collecting dust p4 2.24 80gig 256ram.
is there a problem using linux with win2k?

No problems at all. Especially if you are using it as a firewall/router. It'll basically look at the traffic as regular TCP/IP traffic. To be honest though, a p4 2.24 is going to be WAY overkill for a linux based router. However, if it isn't doing anything else, why not?

I have a WinXP workstation at home with a Fedora based file server. The file server is only a PII 400Mhz and response time is excellent. The only issue I ran into was the learning curve for Samba on Linux. Once I got over that though, I was good to go.

Andy

so than I can put this on a p3 500 and it will work fine?
and I can forward the ports easly? also do I need a version linux?
or does smoothwall have it built in? thanx for all the help

Heck yeah! You could feasibly run smoothwall on an 486 if you really cared to. If you go to smoothwall.org, you can download an iso for smootwall express. It's a pretty easy and straigtforward install. And finally, yes, you can forward ports easily.

Andy

thanks for all your help andy

No problem. Let us know how things work out.

Andy

ok which version of linux should I get I found a bunch of different ones on the net. I am not sure which to download. theres redhat, fedora and some others here is the link I found them at. http://www.linuxiso.org/
can someone tell me which to download? its all confusing and stuff lol

You don't need to get any version of Linux. The smoothwall iso is all you need. You can boot from it once you burn it to a CD and it already includes a complete version of Debian.

Andy