[comp.protocols.tcp-ip] firewall

hubcap@hubcap.clemson.edu (System Janitor) (01/03/91)

Hi... does anyone know how to make a unix host act as a firewall?

I have a DECstation that is acting as the router for a network of PCs.

I don't want anonyomous PC users to be able to telnet anywhere they
want on the Internet, but only to other hosts, specified by us, on our
class B network. In otherwords, I want it to be a firewall.

So far the only way I've been able to do what I want is by adding a static 
route to the DECstation gateway (this gets the PC's packets out) and a 
static route to the external host I want to be able to reach (this gets 
that host's packets back in). This is workable, but not
desireable from a management standpoint (if there were 100 hosts on campus
that the PCs might need to reach, that would mean 100 static routes would 
have to be added by hand to all 100 hosts).

I fooled around with gated some, in particular with the pointtopoint RIP 
option. I told gated to only do pointotpoint RIP and that the sourceripgateway
was one of the SUN servers on campus. I hoped that this would allow the
PCs to have connectivity with the SUN (and the subnet it serves) but 
the PCs ended up with full connectivity to everywhere via ICMP redirects 
through the SUN server.

Any ideas?

-Mike