Networking question

[Phil Hannent]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thomas E. Dukes wrote:
| If I add these PCs to the network behind my firewall, how do I direct
these
| services to the various PCs?  Is this a firewall thing or DNS?
Port address translation will redirect a specific port to a specific
machine.  PAT has to be supported by your firewall to do this.

http://linux-ip.net/html/nat-pat-userspace.html

| Can someone point me to a good (current) howto on this subject?  Is this
| load balancing?
You would need to provide more specifics about the firewall to be able
to point you in the direction of the exact guide you need.

Load balancing is generally given to the process is balancing out a
single service (e.g. web server) between many servers that can handle
the same request.  By offloading ancillary functions (mail) to other
machines you are lighting the load of the main machine but not creating
a balanced cluster of machines.

If you are running a website that needs to maintain high up times and
capacity to deal with heavy loads then load balancing is what you would
need.  However if its just a local network of computers in an office
that share services then PAT is more what you are after as its easier to
administer on the small scale.

It sounds like a very interesting project.  If your really brave try
setting up a load balancing cluster on the network  by reading about
mosix (http://www.mosix.org/).

- --
Regards
Phil Hannent

LEGAL NOTICE

Unless expressly stated otherwise, this message is confidential and may
be privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. Access to this
e-mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not an addressee, any
disclosure or copying of the contents of this e-mail or any action
taken (or not taken) in reliance on it is unauthorised and may be
unlawful. If you are not an addressee, please inform the sender
immediately.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFBZUtUTpmHsAbXf9ARArE8AJwIKX3oo+hn5/RoC6JDHimxgOF/MQCgqBtJ
pvBPr5lpaSegTr8iuqr9xCA=
=1eQp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----