[CLUE-Tech] linux & broadband

[Himanshu Sharma]

Thank you everyone for the overwhelming response I got for my query. Initially, I was a bit apprehensive making the linux box my gateway, for I did not want to lose my windows configuration as it seems to work fine. I have 5 machines in all and I want to configure them as 1 windows box and 4 linux boxes. I am now sure that making linux box as the gateway is the way I will go. I hardly know anything about networking and the OS ( linux ) itself, my goal here is to implement a small network and then go about learning things maybe tweak the kernel a little bit.  
What I gather from reading the HOW-TOs pointed out by Brandon is that the linux box is what is going to be talking to the outside world, more specifically the DNS entry it has will lie in the public domain and in effect, for the LAN, this linux box would be acting more or less like a proxy server. And the DNS it will broadcast to the windows machine would be an entry in the non-public domain and then other computers connected to the linux box will have their own IPs and will only know the proxy IP of the linux box. Am I even close in my understanding? Are portmapping and masquerading different? If they are, which way do I want to go?
The hardware I have available is: 5 machines with 1 running windows and the rest 4 linux, a 5-port hub and network cards. So, I think I have all the necessary hardware to implement a network. Now, I am using att's @home service and I think the IP address they assign is semi-static for it seems to change every time they reconfigure their servers. Would this be a problem once I set up my network? I am sure once I understand the part dealing with configuring the network, I can run a cron twice a day to reconfigure if it detects a change in the IP address. I use MS Outlook for my email ( i know you guys hate anything to do with MS, but that is what I have available), would there be any problems I may run into in accessing my email on the windows machine, once I make my windows machine as the slave?  
I am sure I will have lot more questions as I get dirty with setting it up and I am sure to come to this group for support. Once again, I really do appreciate all your responses, thank you so very much.

regards,
- himanshu
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